Other File-Like Tools

The open function is the workhorse for most file processing you will do in Python. For more advanced tasks, though, Python comes with additional file-like tools: pipes, FIFOs, sockets, keyed-access files, persistent object shelves, descriptor-based files, relational and object-oriented database interfaces, and more. Descriptor files, for instance, support file locking and other low-level tools, and sockets provide an interface for networking and interprocess communication. We won’t cover many of these topics in this book, but you’ll find them useful once you start programming Python in earnest.