Create a file if it doesn't exist

Question

I'm trying to open a file, and if the file doesn't exist, I need to create it and open it for writing. I have this so far:

#open file for reading fn = input("Enter file to open: ") fh = open(fn,'r') # if file does not exist, create it if (!fh)  fh = open ( fh, "w") 

The error message says there's an issue on the line if(!fh). Can I use exist like in Perl?

Answer 1

If you don't need atomicity you can use os module:

import os  if not os.path.exists('/tmp/test'):     os.mknod('/tmp/test') 

UPDATE:

As Cory Klein mentioned, on Mac OS for using os.mknod() you need a root permissions, so if you are Mac OS user, you may use open() instead of os.mknod()

import os  if not os.path.exists('/tmp/test'):     with open('/tmp/test', 'w'): pass