> However as far as I know Python does not allow you to easily change a > specific line in a text file. You have to place the whole file to memory, > change what you need to and then write the file back after deleting the > previous information. > > Assuming this is true, how do i find where the tabs are in the file so that > I can distinguish between the different criteria?
Well, I usually just use something like NAME = 0 RATING = 1 SIZE = 2 OCCURS = 3 name = 'foo' out = file('output.txt', 'w') for line in file('input.txt'): line = line.rstrip('\n') items = line.split('\t') # do something with items: if name in items[NAME].lower(): items[RATING] = str(int(items[RATING]) + 1) out.write('\t'.join(items)) out.write('\n') which will loop through each line, incrementing the RATING field (assuming it's numeric?) where the NAME field contains 'foo'; then writing the resulting stuff back out to the output file. -tkc -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list