Skip to content
File Methods

truncate()

Resize the file stream to the specified byte size.

file.truncate(size=None)

file.truncate() resizes the file to at most size bytes.

If size is omitted, it truncates the file at the current stream position (from tell()).

Parameters

NameDescription
sizeOptional target size in bytes. Defaults to current file position.

Returns

The new file size in bytes.

Try it

Run it and change it
import tempfile
with tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile(mode='w+', delete=True) as f:
    f.write('Hello World!')
    f.truncate(5)
    f.seek(0)
    print(f.read())

Worth knowing

  • Requires write mode: The file must be opened in a mode that permits writing (e.g. 'r+', 'w', 'a').

Related entries