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In Python, we have built-in functions to handle different file operations. A text file contains a sequence of strings where each line \nis terminated by a newline character.

In this tutorial, we will learn how to read the first line of a text file in Python.

We can use open()the function to create a file object by passing the file path to the function and open a file in a specific mode, which defaults to read mode.

read()Read the first line of a file using the function in Python

read()The function is used to read data from a file. To extract the first line from a file, we can simply use split()the function to get a list of all the lines separated based on the newline character and extract the first line from this list. For example, we can use split()the function to extract the first line from a file.

with open("sample.txt") as f:
    lines = f.read()  # Assume the sample file has 3 lines
    first = lines.split("\n", 1)[0]

print(first)

Output:

Sample File Line 1

readline()Read the first line of a file using the function in Python

Another way to read the first line of a file is to use readline()the function to read a line from the stream.

with open("sample.txt") as f:
    firstline = f.readline().rstrip()

print(firstline)

Output:

Sample File Line 1

Note that we use rstrip()the function to remove the newline at the end of the line, because readline()the function returns the line with a trailing newline.

Use the function in Python readlines()to read the first line of a file

We can also use readlines()the function to read all the lines from the file and return a list with each line as a list item, and then extract the first line from the returned list. For example:

with open("sample.txt") as f:
    firstline = f.readlines()[0].rstrip()

print(firstline)

Output:

Sample File Line 1

next()Read the first line of a file using the function in Python

An unconventional way is to use next()the function to achieve the same thing. It returns the next item in the iterator. So if we pass a file object to next()the function, it will return the first line of the file. For example:

with open("sample.txt") as f:
    firstline = next(f)

print(firstline)

Output:

Sample File Line 1