How to remove last N lines from txt file with Python?

Question

I would like to know what is the fastest and more efficient way of deleting last N lines of a .txt file.

I have been looking for different previous questions and I found that reading and copying lines again is one way.

Remove lines from textfile with python

Nonetheless, I have been trying to look for other way such as skiprows or skipfooter on pandas and be able to save the outcome to other txt.

At the same time, I have seen threads about "head" and "sed" but not sure about their usage in Python.

Could you, please, give advice on this topic?

Answer 1

if you want to skip last n lines using pandas then:

import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_csv('yourfile.txt', skipfooter = N)
df.to_csv('yournewfile.txt')

Change the delimiter using sep = ... if necessary

Alternatively do as per the answer you cited, but using with open(..) as good practice:

with open('yourfile.txt') as f1:
    lines = f1.readlines()

with open('yournewfile.txt', 'w') as f2:
    f2.writelines(lines[:-N])