As we have seen, Python's elementary I/O functions are an excellent starting point for those who may be new to programming. It is easy to write code to accept user input from a prompt, for example. But Python also provides powerful I/O capabilities for supporting a wide variety of practical applications.

In this section, we will see how to format variables and text prior to printing them to the screen; how to read data from and write data into files; and even how to preserve entire objects and classes for later re-initialization.

If you are experienced with C/Fortran programming, you should find Python's advanced I/O operations to be flexible and robust (rather like the language itself).