Why am I getting a FileNotFoundError

Question

I am working on a program that read a file and searches for a word then prints how many times that word is found in the file. When I  type in "test.rtf" I get this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "/Users/AshleyStallings/Documents/School Work/Computer Programming/Side Projects/How many? (Python).py", line 9, in <module>
    fileScan= open(fileName, 'r')  #Opens file
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'test.rtf'

The important part of my code:

fileName= input("Please enter the name of the file you'd like to use.")
fileScan= open(fileName, 'r')  #Opens file

Can someone help me with this?

Answer 1

The current working directory usually is the directory in which you started the program. In your case, the file test.rtf must be in the same directory in which you execute the program. The best thing you can do is to open the terminal and then cd to the directory where your input file is located. Then use this code:

$ python script.py

This will start the Python script there itself. For this, to work the directory containing the python executable must be in the PATH. 

I hope this helps you.