Home - News ( United States | United Kingdom | Italy | Germany ) - Football scores

Showing content from https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/python/why-am-i-getting-a-filenotfounderror-in-python/ below:

How to fix FileNotFoundError in Python

Last Updated : 28 Apr, 2025

FileNotFoundError is a built-in Python exception that is raised when an operation such as reading, writing or deleting is attempted on a file that does not exist at the specified path. It is a subclass of OSError and commonly occurs when functions like open(), os.remove() and similar file-handling methods are used without first checking if the file is actually present. Example:

Output

Hangup (SIGHUP)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/guest/sandbox/Solution.py", line 1, in <module>
    file = open("abc.txt")
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'abc.txt'

Let’s look at a few simple ways to fix FileNotFoundError and make sure your program keeps running smoothly even if a file is missing.

Python provides the os.path.exists() method from the built-in os module to check whether a file exists at a given path.

import os
fp = "abc.txt" 

if os.path.exists(fp):
    with open(fp, "r") as f:
        data = f.read()
else:
    print("Not found!")

Try block is a reliable way to handle FileNotFoundError. It lets your program attempt to open the file, and if the file doesn’t exist, the except block gracefully handles the error without crashing the program.

try:
    with open("abc.txt", "r") as file:
        data = file.read()
except FileNotFoundError:
    print("Not found")

Absolute path specify the exact location of the file on your system, removing any ambiguity about where Python should look for it.

import os

print("Current directory:", os.getcwd())
fp = "/absolute/path/to/abc.txt" # file path 

with open(fp, "r") as file:
    data = file.read()

If the file does not exist, using write mode ("w") in Python will automatically create it. This is useful when you want to ensure the file exists, even if it wasn't there before.

with open("abc.txt", "w") as file:
    file.write("This file has been created!")

Output

RetroSearch is an open source project built by @garambo | Open a GitHub Issue

Search and Browse the WWW like it's 1997 | Search results from DuckDuckGo

HTML: 3.2 | Encoding: UTF-8 | Version: 0.7.4