python file read() displaying empty line -

i following series of tutorials (http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/ex16.html ) online , stuck. have looked everywhere answer cannot seem o find solution. apologise if silly question , obvious total beginner.

the script below works fine except 1 mistake. .read () command on line 29 returns empty when script run.

if tell me why , how fix happy.

kind regards. :)

from sys import argv  script, filename = argv  print "we going erase %r" % filename print "if not want hit ctrl c ( ^c )." print "if want hit return."  raw_input ("?")  print "opening file....." target = open (filename, "r+")  print "truncating file. goodbye!" target.truncate ()  print "now going ask 3 lines"  line1 = raw_input ("line 1:") line2 = raw_input ("line 2:") line3 = raw_input ("line 3:")  print "now, im going write 3 lines %s file:" % filename  target.write ("%s\n%s\n%s" % (line1, line2, line3))  print "now going show contents of file:"  print target.read()   print "and close." target.close() 

the file cursor has been moved after writes. natural consequence of writing. if want read wrote, need reset file cursor beginning of file:

target.seek(0) 

...subsequent reads have access text you've put in file.