Page 1 - Lesson Note

Computer Science

Chapter – Data File Handling

Topic: Text Files
Class – XII

Need of Data File
Program executed till date run for a short period of time and when they end data
disappears.
Need of a file is to store data permanently.
In case of I/O operations input is done from these files and output is also written to the
files.

File

A FILE is a sequence of bytes or data stored on a permanent storage device (HD), which can
be read, written or rewritten according to requirement.
File I/O means transfer of data from secondary memory (hard disk) to main memory or vice
versa.

File Operations
General file operations are:
 Create
 Traverse
 Append
 Insert
 Delete
 Modification
 Creating copy

Types of Files
Text File Binary File

 Consists of ASCII/UNICODE  A file which contains information
characters exactly in a format in which
 Each line of text is terminated with a information is held in the memory
EOL (end of line) character.  No ASCII/UNICODE translation, no EOL
 In Python default EOL is newline(\n). character
 Text file is used to store character  Faster processing
data which the user is going to  Apart from text/numeric binary
access from file directly content, images, video files, audio files
etc get stored as binary files