37 — Files: saving and reading again

Everything so far disappeared when the program ended. A file stays. Part 3 begins here.

From this guide on, the programs do not run on the site. There is nowhere inside a browser to keep a file, so a program that writes one fails on needmoreeasy.com. Try these on your own computer, after install.

#Steps

1. Write it. Name the file and the text to put in it:

   write "today was a good day" to "diary.txt"
   

   copyrun it →

   diary.txt appears in the folder you ran the program from.

2. Read it back into a name, then show that name:

   read "diary.txt" into memo
   show memo
   

   copyrun it →

3. Put them together and it is one program:

   write "today was a good day" to "diary.txt"
   read "diary.txt" into memo
   show memo
   

   copyrun it →

   Korean is "일기.txt" 파일에 "…"를 저장해 and 메모에 "일기.txt" 읽어서.

4. This is the one place quotes appear. Sentence syntax has no quotes anywhere else. A file name is the exception because diary.txt is not a word of your sentence — it is the name of something outside the program, and the quotes are what say "take this exactly as it stands".

5. What somebody types can be saved too. Put the answer straight in:

   ask today What happened today?
   write today to "diary.txt"
   read "diary.txt" into memo
   show what was saved
   show memo
   

   copyrun it →

   Run it a second time and the first entry is overwritten. Adding to a file instead of replacing it is 44 — Log.

#Try it yourself

Take the game from 23 — High score and write the best score to a file at the end. Then stop the program, start it again, and check the file is still there.

#What you learned

• write … to "name.txt" puts text in a file.
• read "name.txt" into … takes it back out.
• File names are wrapped in quotes — the only place sentence syntax uses them.
• The file appears in the folder you ran the program from.
• Writing the same name again replaces what was there.
• A program that uses files does not run in a browser.