What is the Python "with" statement used for?

Question

I am trying to understand the with statement in python. Everywhere I look it talks of opening and closing a file, and is meant to replace the try-finally block. Could someone post some other examples too. I am just trying out flask and there are with statements galore in it. Definitely request someone to provide some clarity on it.

Answer 1

There's a very nice explanation here. Basically, the with statement calls two special methods on the associated object. The __enter__ and __exit__ methods. The enter method returns the variable associated with the "with" statement. While the __exit__ method is called after the statement executes to handle any cleanup (such as closing a file pointer).