Writing newline with Python codecs.write

Question

f = codecs.open('import.txt', 'w', 'utf-8')

for x in list:
    string = "Hello"
    f.write(string+'\n')

f.close()

For some reason this code does not write newlines to the file, as it would do if I had used the open function instead of codecs.open.

How do I solve this?

possible duplicate of [Print to UTF-8 encoded file, with platform-dependent newlines?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5941988/print-to-utf-8-encoded-file-with-platform-dependent-newlines) — ivan_pozdeev, Feb 10 '15 at 19:17

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 11 '15 at 03:49

codecs.open() does not handle newlines correctly ('U' mode is deprecated):

Underlying encoded files are always opened in binary mode. No automatic conversion of '\n' is done on reading and writing.

Use builtin open() function instead. If you want the same code to work on both Python 2 and 3 from the same source; you could use io.open().

Joran Beasley · Accepted Answer · 2015-02-10T19:01:46.693

1

not sure what you are talking about ... also showing you how to have a complete runnable example

>>> import codecs
>>> f = codecs.open('import.txt', 'w', 'utf-8')
>>> f.write("hello\nworld\n")
>>> f.close()
>>> print repr(open("import.txt").read())
'hello\nworld\n'
>>>

based on the comments the real answer is

DONT USE NOTEPAD

edited Feb 10 '15 at 19:01

answered Feb 10 '15 at 18:47

Joran Beasley

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That seems to work, but strangely enough when I open the text file in notepad there are no newlines. – wasmachien Feb 10 '15 at 18:53
Just tried notepad++, newlines do show up over there. Thanks. – wasmachien Feb 10 '15 at 18:55
notepad is basically the crapiest text editor ever concieved ... just delete it from your system – Joran Beasley Feb 10 '15 at 18:59
Doesn't `stdio` convert `\n` to `\r\n` if the file is open in text mode (which is the case)? – ivan_pozdeev Feb 10 '15 at 19:12
Crap, `codecs` always open the underlying stream as binary. – ivan_pozdeev Feb 10 '15 at 19:14
@user2704291: normally, `'\n'` is converted to `os.linesep` (`'\r\n'` on Windows) during writing. [`codecs` module does not do that. Do not use it. Use `io.open` instead](http://stackoverflow.com/a/28446305/4279) – jfs Feb 11 '15 at 03:53

Writing newline with Python codecs.write

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