Question

What does it mean when the readline method returns an empty string?

Short answer

Answer: The readline method returning an empty string signifies that it has reached the end of the file and there are no more lines left to read.

Step-by-step solution

Understanding the readline method

The readline method is typically used when working with files in programming languages. It reads a single line from a file and returns that line as a string, including any newline characters (\n) at the end. It is commonly used within loops to read a file line by line until the end of the file is reached.

Interpreting an empty string

When the readline method returns an empty string, it means that it has reached the end of the file and there are no more lines left to read. In other words, the file's contents have been fully processed, and there is no more data to be extracted.

Example

Consider the following example in Python: ``` with open("example.txt", "r") as file: line = file.readline() while line: print(line.strip()) line = file.readline() ``` In this example, the readline method is used in a loop to read an "example.txt" file line by line. For each iteration of the loop, it will print the current line without any newline characters or whitespace. The loop will continue until the readline method returns an empty string, indicating the end of the file has been reached, and the loop will terminate.