How do I create and open files through Python?

Question

I have a very elementary question, but I've tried searching past posts and can't seem to find anything that can help. I'm learning about file i/o in Python. All the tutorials I've seen thus far seem to skip a step and just assume that a file has already been created, and just being by saying something like handleName = open('text.txt', 'r'), but this leaves 2 questions unanswered for me:

1. Do I have to create the file manually and name it? I'm using a Mac, so would I have to go to Applications, open up TextEdit, create and save the file or would I be able to do that through some command in IDLE?
2. I tried manually creating a file (as described above), but then when I tried entering openfile = open('test_readline', 'r'), I got the error: IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'abc'

Regarding the error, I'm assuming I have to declare the path, but how do I do so in Python?

Answer 1

openfile = open('test_readline', 'w')

                                  ^^

Opening in write mode will create the file if it doesn't already exist. Now you can write into it and close the file pointer and it will be saved.