Replace and overwrite instead of appending

You need seek to the beginning of the file before writing and then use file.truncate() if you want to do inplace replace:

import re

myfile = "path/test.xml"

with open(myfile, "r+") as f:
    data = f.read()
    f.seek(0)
    f.write(re.sub(r"<string>ABC</string>(\s+)<string>(.*)</string>", r"<xyz>ABC</xyz>\1<xyz>\2</xyz>", data))
    f.truncate()

The other way is to read the file then open it again with open(myfile, 'w'):

with open(myfile, "r") as f:
    data = f.read()

with open(myfile, "w") as f:
    f.write(re.sub(r"<string>ABC</string>(\s+)<string>(.*)</string>", r"<xyz>ABC</xyz>\1<xyz>\2</xyz>", data))

Neither truncate nor open(..., 'w') will change the inode number of the file (I tested twice, once with Ubuntu 12.04 NFS and once with ext4).

By the way, this is not really related to Python. The interpreter calls the corresponding low level API. The method truncate() works the same in the C programming language: See http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/truncate.2.html

file='path/test.xml' 
with open(file, 'w') as filetowrite:
    filetowrite.write('new content')

Open the file in 'w' mode, you will be able to replace its current text save the file with new contents.

Using truncate(), the solution could be

import re
#open the xml file for reading:
with open('path/test.xml','r+') as f:
    #convert to string:
    data = f.read()
    f.seek(0)
    f.write(re.sub(r"<string>ABC</string>(\s+)<string>(.*)</string>",r"<xyz>ABC</xyz>\1<xyz>\2</xyz>",data))
    f.truncate()

import os#must import this library
if os.path.exists('TwitterDB.csv'):
        os.remove('TwitterDB.csv') #this deletes the file
else:
        print("The file does not exist")#add this to prevent errors

I had a similar problem, and instead of overwriting my existing file using the different 'modes', I just deleted the file before using it again, so that it would be as if I was appending to a new file on each run of my code.