File Handling Homework Help
In programming, especially if you are doing data analysis, there are times when you are required to read certain types of files. Let’s say, you are to perform a time series analysis on a data set that is stored in a comma-separated file or CSV. There are a lot of operations that you can do before you can load the dataset into the programming language that you are using. It’s what we are going to explore here. But first, let’s start by defining what file handling is.
What is file handling?
File handling as related to this context means the way software handles a field. This is a rather round-about meaning that cannot really help you. Let’s define it another way. File handling is the process whereby the computer software handles its input and output normally in the form of text. It does not matter what type of software you are using, but file handling is a very important concept which ensures that all the inputs and outputs are stored for future use.
The tasks involved in file handling.
In any software, the file handling tasks include opening and reading a file, writing data on the file, and closing the file. We shall review these tasks in detail in this article.
Opening and reading a file.
This means loading a file from your system on which you are going to perform an analysis or for creating a program. In most cases, they can be easily loaded if they are in your directory. A directory is a folder where all the processes involving the software are stored. In this directory, you can easily load a file by just using its name. If it’s located elsewhere, ensure that you include the file path. In all two instances, most programming languages load a file as a string. Ensure when you are loading the file, the file name, and file path should be enclosed in quotations.
In some cases, you want to create a new instance of a field that you want to save data into. Let’s say you want to store a random generation of time series data into a file. You are first required to open the file though it will be empty. Such a file will be stored in your project's directory.
So what types of files can you open? The most common types of files that you can read onto your software are Microsoft excel, CSV, PDF, and TXT files. Images can also be read into the software, and the common image formats are PNG, JPG, and JPEG. Videos, cannot be forgotten, especially given the fact that they are not commonly used by most students. But if you use them, you can open file formats such as MP4, MKV, and AVI.
Writing data
Let’s take the case of generating random variables that you want to store into a file. That is writing on a file. While using any programming software, there are lots of things that you can do to a file. Take the case of the time series data. You could remove the rows which are empty or exclude the data that you think is not vital. A good example is when you have plotted graphs. Normally, it’s not automatic to store graphs in any programming language. But they allow you to choose how you want to store the graphs. The same is with images, you can add features such as changing them to grayscale or and some text on the image.
There are so many things that you could do with writing on the data. You could also copy the file into a new variable. Options are limitless, and they could help you achieve what you want to do with the software.
Closing the file.
When you are done with all the data manipulations, the file was opened. Let’s take the case that you have initiated the software to store a graph on a pdf file once you are done with all that you wanted to do, then you have to notify the processor that you have completed the process, and it will close the file and store the output.
Generally, there are different ways of file handling, mastering them is not easy, but if you need any help, you can ask file handling experts like us. For any queries that you have, our online file handling tutors will be glad to provide you with help.