I know this is dirt simple but I'm writing it down because it is one of those simple things that I just forget constantly.

In each of these cases, the output is to the str variable.

Using a With Block to Auto Close the File

As a rubyist, I keep reading this as str is local to the with "block". Of course python doesn't have blocks …

with open('data.txt', 'r') as myfile:
  str = myfile.read()

Python 3.5 Path Statement One Liner

I really like this approach but pathlib always has to be imported.

from pathlib import Path
str = Path('data.txt').read_text()

This is simple but leaves an open file hanging around. Sigh.

str = open('jsons/gab_02.json', 'r').read()

Auto Closing Single Line

This is elegant but it buries the assignment variable in the middle of the line which feels wrong.

_ = open('jsons/gab_02.json', 'r'); str = _.read(); _.close()

Loading it to JSON

The json.loads statement takes a string in and converts it to a Python dict / hash so all you need to do is inline the string reading call from above and get an easy one liner (if you disregard the import lines).

from pathlib import Path
import json

gab = json.loads(Path('jsons/gab_02.json').read_text())

References