How to check whether a file is empty or not

Question

I have a text file  How can I check whether it s empty or not

User · Answer

Ok so I ll combine ghostdog74 s answer and the comments  just for fun    gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  os stat  c  pagefile sys   st size  0 False   False means a non-empty file   So let s write a function   import os  def file is empty path       return os stat path  st size  0

User · Answer

Since you have not defined what an empty file is  Some might consider a file with just blank lines also an empty file  So if you want to check if your file contains only blank lines  any whitespace character    r     n     t    you can follow the example below   Python3    import re  def whitespace only file       content   open file   r   read       if re search r   s     content           return True   Explain  the example above uses regular expression  regex  to match the content  content  of the file  Specifically  for regex of    s   as a whole means if the file contains only blank lines and or blank spaces     -   asserts position at start of a line    -  s matches any whitespace character  equal to   r n t f v       -   Quantifier     Matches between zero and unlimited times  as many times as possible  giving back as needed  greedy   -   asserts position at the end of a line

User · Answer

if you have the file object  then   gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  with open  new file txt   as my file          my file seek 0  os SEEK END    go to end of file         if my file tell      if current position is truish  i e    0              my file seek 0    rewind the file for later use          else              print  file is empty       file is empty

User · Answer

if for some reason you already had the file open you could try this    gt  gt  gt  with open  New Text Document txt   as my file            I already have file open at this point   now what          my file seek 0   ensure you re at the start of the file           first char   my file read 1   get the first character         if not first char              print  file is empty   first character is the empty string           else              my file seek 0   first character wasn t empty  return to start of file               use file now     file is empty

User · Answer

Both getsize   and stat   will throw an exception if the file does not exist  This function will return True False without throwing  simpler but less robust    import os def is non zero file fpath         return os path isfile fpath  and os path getsize fpath   gt  0

User · Answer

if you want to check csv file is empty or not        try this   with open  file csv   a  newline     as f          csv writer DictWriter f fieldnames   user name   user age   user email   user gender   user type   user check            if os stat  file csv   st size  gt  0              pass         else              csv writer writeheader

User · Answer

An important gotcha  a compressed empty file will appear to be non-zero when tested with getsize   or stat   functions     python  gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  os path getsize  empty-file txt gz   35  gt  gt  gt  os stat  empty-file txt gz   st size    0 False    gzip -cd empty-file txt gz   wc 0 0 0   So you should check whether the file to be tested is compressed  e g  examine the filename suffix  and if so  either bail or uncompress it to a temporary location  test the uncompressed file  and then delete it when done

User · Answer

If you are using Python3 with pathlib you can access os stat   information using the Path stat   method  which has the attribute st size file size in bytes     gt  gt  gt  from pathlib import Path   gt  gt  gt  mypath   Path  path to my file    gt  gt  gt  mypath stat   st size    0   True if empty

User · Answer

import os     os path getsize fullpathhere   gt  0

User · Answer

gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  os stat  file   st size    0 True

[python] How to check whether a file is empty or not?

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