pointer

The seek() and tell() methods in Python's file objects are used to manage the file pointer—an internal marker that tracks the current position within an open file.

inFile.seek(0)

This command moves the file pointer to the beginning of the file. The argument 0 represents an offset of zero bytes from the starting position. This is useful when you want to read a file's contents again from the beginning without having to close and reopen it.

inFile.seek(8, SEEK_CUR)

This command moves the file pointer forward by 8 bytes from its current position. The SEEK_CUR constant is a flag that tells the seek() method to use the current position as a reference point for the offset.

inFile.seek(-3, SEEK_CUR)

This command moves the file pointer backward by 3 bytes from its current position. The negative offset value combined with the SEEK_CUR flag allows you to move the pointer backward in the file. This is often used to "back up" a few characters, perhaps to re-read or check a previous part of the data.

position = inFile.tell()

This command retrieves the current position of the file pointer and assigns it to the position variable. The value returned by tell() is an integer representing the number of bytes from the beginning of the file to the current position. This is useful for getting the pointer's location before you perform a move with seek(), so you can return to that same spot later.