What does the "w" mean in open(filename, "w")?

Question

I'm reading Exercise 16 of "Learn Python The Hard way" and I'm confused about open(filename, "w") -- what does the "w" mean?

Answer 1

w stands for writing permission for the opened file

open(name[, mode[, buffering]])

Looking at the signature we can (often) understand what each argument does more info here

Answer 2

The second argument in opening a filename represents the mode you're using (i.e., read-only, writable). In this case, it's to be able to (w)rite to the file.

https://docs.python.org/2/tutorial/inputoutput.html#reading-and-writing-files

Answer 3

The "W" means that you are opening the file called filename with the purpose of writing to it(hence the "W" for write.)

Answer 4

The "w" specifies that the file is being written to. As you can see here, "w" is the mode that you use when writing to a file.

The most commonly-used values of mode are 'r' for reading, 'w' for writing (truncating the file if it already exists)...