How to delete the first line of a text file?

Assuming you have enough memory to hold everything in memory:

with open('file.txt', 'r') as fin:
    data = fin.read().splitlines(True)
with open('file.txt', 'w') as fout:
    fout.writelines(data[1:])

We could get fancier, opening the file, reading and then seeking back to the beginning eliminating the second open, but really, this is probably good enough.

Here is a memory-efficient (?) solution which makes use of shutil:

import shutil

source_file = open('file.txt', 'r')
source_file.readline()
# this will truncate the file, so need to use a different file name:
target_file = open('file.txt.new', 'w')

shutil.copyfileobj(source_file, target_file)

You can do it much easier by simply stating what is the first line to be read:

    with open(filename, "r") as f:
        rows = f.readlines()[1:]

Safer to use one open() for read & write, so you won't lose data if you want to use the file from another thread/process:

def pop(self, file):
    with open(file, 'r+') as f: # open file in read / write mode
        firstLine = f.readline() # read the first line and throw it out
        data = f.read() # read the rest
        f.seek(0) # set the cursor to the top of the file
        f.write(data) # write the data back
        f.truncate() # set the file size to the current size
        return firstLine

fifo = pop('filename.txt')

This solution will work for big files that don't fit into memory by reading and writing one line at a time:

import os
from shutil import move
from tempfile import NamedTemporaryFile

# Take off the first line which has the system call and params
file_path = 'xxxx'
temp_path = None
with open(file_path, 'r') as f_in:
    with NamedTemporaryFile(mode='w', delete=False) as f_out:
        temp_path = f_out.name
        next(f_in)  # skip first line
        for line in f_in:
            f_out.write(line)

os.remove(file_path)
move(temp_path, file_path)

Just a suggestion, cause I faced the same problem with the difference that I didn't want to delete the first raw from the original .txt file just to use the content from the 2nd raw and on.

I use the simple solution of

with open(file) as f:
    content = f.readlines()
    content = content[1:]

This is always the case if you don't want to permanently delete the content of the file.

I too wanted to read the first line of a file:

# open the file and read the contents
fp = open(file_path_name)
content = fp.readline()                 # read just the first line
print(content)

Worked well for me.

This is my code for removing the first line from a file I hope it helps you

  with open(r"dark.json", 'r+') as fp:
  # read an store all lines into list
  lines = fp.readlines()
  # move file pointer to the beginning of a file
  fp.seek(0)
  # truncate the file
  fp.truncate()

  # start writing lines except the first line
  # lines[1:] from line 2 to last line
  fp.writelines(lines[1:])