How to read a file in other directory in python

Looks like you are trying to open a directory for reading as if it's a regular file. Many OSs won't let you do that. You don't need to anyway, because what you want (judging from your description) is

x_file = open(os.path.join(direct, "5_1.txt"), "r")  

or simply

x_file = open(direct+"/5_1.txt", "r")

In case you're not in the specified directory (i.e. direct), you should use (in linux):

x_file = open('path/to/direct/filename.txt')

Note the quotes and the relative path to the directory.

This may be your problem, but you also don't have permission to access that file. Maybe you're trying to open it as another user.

You can't "open" a directory using the open function. This function is meant to be used to open files.

Here, what you want to do is open the file that's in the directory. The first thing you must do is compute this file's path. The os.path.join function will let you do that by joining parts of the path (the directory and the file name):

fpath = os.path.join(direct, "5_1.txt")

You can then open the file:

f = open(fpath)

And read its content:

content = f.read()

Additionally, I believe that on Windows, using open on a directory does return a PermissionDenied exception, although that's not really the case.

i found this way useful also.

import tkinter.filedialog
from_filename = tkinter.filedialog.askopenfilename()  

here a window will appear so you can browse till you find the file , you click on it then you can continue using open , and read .

from_file = open(from_filename, 'r')
contents = from_file.read()
contents