Temporary file utility class in Python

Question

I decided to write a tiny class to automatically write and delete a file given filename and content. It is intended to make testing IO less verbose. I include a small example usage.

temporary.py

import os
class Temporary:
 def __init__(self, name, content):
 self.name = name
 self.content = content
 def __enter__(self):
 with open(self.name, 'w+') as f:
 f.write(self.content)
 def __exit__(self,_,__,___):
 os.remove(self.name)

first_word.py

import doctest
from temporary import Temporary
def first_word_of_each_line(filename):
 """
 >>> txt = '\\n'.join(['first line', 'second line', 'bar bar'])
 >>> with Temporary('foo.txt', txt): first_word_of_each_line('foo.txt')
 ['first', 'second', 'bar']
 """
 with open(filename) as f:
 lines = f.read().splitlines()
 return [line.split()[0] for line in lines]
if __name__ == "__main__":
 doctest.testmod()

• JaDogg: Better to patch open using something like pypi.python.org/pypi/mock
• Gareth Rees: What was wrong with the various temporary file classes in the tempfile module?
• Caridorc: @GarethRees nothing this is just an exercise with with not intended to be used for serious purposes

Answer 1

There, well, really isn't much to review here, so I have just a couple of points on this.

• Add a docstring to the class Temporary. Describe what this class does in detail, and flesh it out with useful information about arguments as well.
• You're missing some whitespace in between parameters in your __exit__ declaration. It should look like this def __exit__(self, _, __, ___).
• You should add a method like write_to_file so that the user can change the contents of the file during runtime, before it's deleted.
• As mentioned by @GarethRees, there's already a Python module built for this kind of use, tempfile.

I hope this helps! If there's anything else that you want me to cover on this, mention it in the comments, and I'll see if I can cover it.