Open a file from user input in python 2.7

Question

How would I open a file by asking for user input? After raw_input("PROMPT") requests filename.txt from the user, I get the error code:

TypeError: coercing to Unicode: need string or buffer, file found

which tells me I need to convert the user input to a string, or format it a different way.

What is the correct way of telling Python selectfile means "open this file"?

selectfile = file(raw_input("Enter Filename: "), 'r')
with open(selectfile, 'r') as inF:

with open('outputfile.txt', 'w') as f:

    for index, line in enumerate(inF):

        if myString in line:

                print "Search Term Found!"

                f.write("Line %d has string: %s" % (index, line))

filename = "outputfile.txt"
myfile = open(filename)
lines = len(myfile.readlines())

Answer 1

The issue is in the lines -

selectfile = file(raw_input("Enter Filename: "), 'r')
with open(selectfile, 'r') as inF:

You need to open the filename (which is inputted from user) directly, as below -

with open(raw_input("Enter Filename: "),'r') as inF:

Also, there seems to be an indentation issue in your code, seems like you really don't want to use with command for openning the input file, you may want to do -

inF = open(raw_input("Enter Filename: "),'r')