re ading and writing files variables are fine way to store data while your program is runningbut if you want your data to persist even after your program has finishedyou need to save it to file you can think of file' contents as single string valuepotentially gigabytes in size in this you will learn how to use python to createreadand save files on the hard drive files and file paths file has two key propertiesa filename (usually written as one wordand path the path specifies the location of file on the computer for examplethere is file on my windows laptop with the filename project docx in the path :\users\al\documents the part of the filename after the last period is called the file' extension and tells you file' type the filename project docx