The following example loads the file into memory only one line at a time, so it should suit your purposes:
>>> data = file( "important.dat" , "w" ) >>> data.write("this\nis\nimportant\ndata") >>> data.close() now read it.... >>> import re >>> data = file( "important.dat" , "r" ) >>> line = data.readline() >>> while line: for x in re.finditer( "\w+" , line): print x.group() line = data.readline() this is important data >>> -- Daniel Bickett dbickett at gmail.com http://heureusement.org/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list