Reading and writing data files

The read and write words are good examples of the generalized way in which Red words work. They are used to read and write all sorts of files (text and binary data), but you can also use them with network ports or URLs (see the stock quotes example later in this chapter). If you have worked with files in other languages, you'll appreciate their ease of use; in Red, there is no need to open a file in a certain mode and close it afterwards!

Let's work with the exact same data from our contacts series example in Chapter 5, Working with Series and Blocks:

;-- see Chapter07/reading-and-writing-files.red:
contacts: [
     "John Smith" "123 Tomline Lane Forest Hills, NJ" "555-1234"
     "Paul Thompson" "234 Georgetown Pl. Grove, AL" "555-2345"
     "Jim Persee" "345 Pickles...