In Python, you can open a file using the open() function. It requires at least one argument: the file name (and its path, if not in the current directory). You can specify a second argument to define the mode, such as ‘r’ for reading, ‘w’ for writing, or ‘a’ for appending. For example, file = open(‘example.txt’, ‘r’) opens a file for reading. After working with the file, it’s important to close it using the file.close() method, or use a with statement to automatically close the file once the operations are complete, ensuring proper resource management.