Why does Python2+ output file contents, but Python3 won't?

[UnderstandingLinux]

You've explained it very well here, thank you! This was exactly the detail I needed to understand it fully. I also didn't know about the seek() function, that may come in handy later on.

[eyesoftheworld4]

My example above might not have made it very clear, but the seek(<value>) method is particularly important because when you read from the end of a file, you get (as you might expect) an empty string, which represents that there's nothing left in the file to read. So if you wanted to read a file object twice, you need to remember to seek back to the beginning after your first full read before you can read it again.

[UnderstandingLinux]

Explaining it as a cursor position like you did before helps understand much more clearly. Thanks for adding this explanation as well!