["python","readfile"]
open read and close a file in 1 line of code

Now I use: pageHeadSectionFile = open('pagehead.section.htm','r') output = pageHeadSectionFile.read() pageHeadSectionFile.close() But to make the code look better, I can do: output = open('pagehead.section.htm','r').read() When using the above syntax, how do I close the file to free up system resources?
You don't really have to close it - Python will do it automatically either during garbage collection or at program exit. But as @delnan noted, it's better practice to explicitly close it for various reasons. So, what you can do to keep it short, simple and explicit: with open('pagehead.section.htm', 'r') as f: output = f.read() Now it's just two lines and pretty readable, I think.