If this is the record, then you can use split to get a list of the individual fields and then convert to int or float where necessary. rec = "2NHST1 C1 56 3.263 2.528 16.345 " rec_split = rec.split() print rec_split
If you want to read two records at a time, then use all_data = open(name, "r").readlines() to read all data into memory, given that the file isn't huge. You can then use a for loop, step=2, to access 2 records at a time. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list