Member Avatar for Bashy345

Trying to make the user write to a file and seeing if it exists and if they should override it

    print("Enter a file name to save your database to.")
    name = input('Enter name of text file: ')+'.txt'
    if name print ("Would you like to overwrite this file? Yes or No")
    if "yes"
Edited by pritaeas because: Moved to software dev.
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  • Latest Post Latest Post by Gribouillis

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asked how to prompt for a filename and decide whether to overwrite; clarified the language, and provided a helpful exists-check example. The short, more robust pattern below uses Path and exclusive-creation mode so the existence check and file creation are atomic (avoids a time-of-check / time-of-use race). The snippet is for Python 3 and keeps handling simple and clear.

from pathlib import Path
import sys

name = input("Enter name of text file: ").strip()
if not name:
    sys.exit("Empty filename")

p = Path(name).expanduser()
if p.suffix == "":
    p = p.with_suffix(".txt")

try:
    # create only if missing
    with p.open("x", encoding="utf-8") as fh:
        fh.write("...")  # place DB output here
except FileExistsError:
    ans = input("{} exists. Overwrite? [y/N]: ".format(p)).strip().lower()
    if ans in ("y", "yes"):
        with p.open("w", encoding="utf-8") as fh:
            fh.write("...")
    else:
        sys.exit("Abort: not overwriting")

Notes and tips: using mode "x" (raises FileExistsError) is preferable to calling exists() before open because it prevents race conditions; falling back to "w" only after explicit consent preserves behavior. expanduser() and with_suffix() normalize common inputs (tilde and missing .txt). Handle PermissionError and other OSErrors around the open/write in real code. For safer replacement of large or critical files, write to a temporary file and atomically rename (os.replace) to avoid partial writes. For appending use mode "a". This approach builds on 's check-for-file idea but makes the create-or-fail step atomic and simpler to reason about.

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Member Avatar for tinstaafl

What language are you using? What code have you tried?

Member Avatar for Bashy345

I'm using Python

Member Avatar for Gribouillis

You can start with this

import os

print('Enter a file name to save your database to.')
name = input('Enter name of text file: ').strip()
if name:
    name = os.path.expanduser(name + '.txt')
    if os.path.isfile(name):
        while True:
            overwrite = input("Would you like to overwrite this file? Yes or No: ")
            overwrite = overwrite.strip().capitalize()
            if overwrite in ('Yes', 'No'):
                break
            else:
                print('Error: please answer Yes or No')
        if overwrite == 'No':
            raise NotImplementedError("I don't know what to do!")
else:
    raise RuntimeError('Got an empty name')
Edited by Gribouillis
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