Fix Python – Writing to a new file if it doesn’t exist, and appending to a file if it does

Question 1

I have a program which writes a user’s highscore to a text file. The file is named by the user when they choose a playername.

If the file with that specific username already exists, then the program should append to the file (so that you can see more than one highscore). And if a file with that username doesn’t exist (for example, if the user is new), it should create a new file and write to it.

Here’s the relevant, so far not working, code:

try: 
    with open(player): #player is the varible storing the username input
        with open(player, 'a') as highscore:
            highscore.write("Username:", player)

except IOError:
    with open(player + ".txt", 'w') as highscore:
        highscore.write("Username:", player)

The above code creates a new file if it doesn’t exist, and writes to it. If it exists, nothing has been appended when I check the file, and I get no errors.

Question 2

It’s not clear to me exactly where the high-score that you’re interested in is stored, but the code below should be what you need to check if the file exists and append to it if desired. I prefer this method to the “try/except”.

import os
player = 'bob'

filename = player+'.txt'

if os.path.exists(filename):
    append_write = 'a' # append if already exists
else:
    append_write = 'w' # make a new file if not

highscore = open(filename,append_write)
highscore.write("Username: " + player + '\n')
highscore.close()

Question

Answer