open() and file.write() without file.close()

[kryptomatrix]

BPO	38548
Nosy	@vstinner
Superseder	bpo-17852: Built-in module _io can lose data from buffered files in reference cycles

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2019-10-21.12:20:44.094>
created_at = <Date 2019-10-21.12:12:20.903>
labels = ['type-feature', '3.7', 'docs']
title = 'open() and file.write() without file.close()'
updated_at = <Date 2019-10-21.12:20:44.092>
user = 'https://bugs.python.org/kryptomatrix'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2019-10-21.12:20:44.092>
actor = 'vstinner'
assignee = 'docs@python'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2019-10-21.12:20:44.094>
closer = 'vstinner'
components = ['Documentation']
creation = <Date 2019-10-21.12:12:20.903>
creator = 'kryptomatrix'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 38548
keywords = []
message_count = 2.0
messages = ['355062', '355063']
nosy_count = 3.0
nosy_names = ['vstinner', 'docs@python', 'kryptomatrix']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'duplicate'
stage = 'resolved'
status = 'closed'
superseder = '17852'
type = 'enhancement'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue38548'
versions = ['Python 3.7']

[kryptomatrix]

Consider the following program:

f = open("out.txt", "w")
f.write("abc\n")
exit(0)

Please note the absence of f.close().
The documentation
https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/inputoutput.html#reading-and-writing-files
says that you should use f.close() or with f = open(), but is not clear whether the program above without f.close() is guaranteed to write. The tutorial says:
"If you don’t explicitly close a file, Python’s garbage collector will eventually destroy the object and close the open file for you, but the file may stay open for a while. Another risk is that different Python implementations will do this clean-up at different times."
For me this sounds like even without f.close() the file is guaranteed to be written. If it is not guaranteed to be written, you should fix the documentation, if it is guaranteed to be written, then I will open another issue because the following program does not write into out.txt on my machine:

from sympy.core import AtomicExpr
class MyWeirdClass(AtomicExpr):
	def __init__(self):
		pass
f = open("out.txt", "w")
f.write("abc\n")
exit(0)

Note: sys.version is: "3.7.3 (default, Oct 7 2019, 12:56:13) \n[GCC 8.3.0]"

[vstinner]

The issue is a duplicate of bpo-17852.