Syntax error when using "with open" in Python (python newbie)

Question

[root@234571-app2 git]# ./test.py 
  File "./test.py", line 4
    with open("/home/git/post-receive-email.log",'a') as log_file:
            ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

The code looks like this:

[root@234571-app2 git]# more test.py 
#!/usr/bin/python
from __future__ import with_statement

with open("/home/git/post-receive-email.log",'a') as log_file:
    log_file.write("hello world")

and I am using Python 2.5.5

[root@234571-app2 git]# python -V
Python 2.5.5

Answer 1

What you have should be correct. Python 2.5 introduced the with statement as something you can import from __future__. Since your code is correct, the only explanation I can think of is that your python version is not what you think it is. There's a good chance you have multiple versions of python installed on the system and for some reason your code is running with an older version. Try running it like this:

[root@234571-app2 git]# /usr/bin/python2.5 test.py

Assuming this works, you can change your first line to indicate which version of python you'd like. That can either be a direct path to python2.5 or you can use the env command to search the user's PATH variable for python2.5. The correct approach depends on what your systems python installs are. Here are the 2 approaches:

To use /usr/bin/python2.5 directly, you can do this:

#!/usr/bin/python2.5

To use whichever version of python2.5 occurs first in your PATH, do this:

#!/usr/bin/env python2.5

Answer 2

Maybe like this?

#!/usr/bin/env python2.5
from __future__ import with_statement

with open("/home/git/post-receive-email.log",'a') as log_file:
    log_file.write("hello world")