On Jan 22, 2005, at 13:53, Kent Johnson wrote:
That is the simplest solution. If your file gets bigger and you don't want to read it all at once, you can use enumerate to iterate the lines and pick out the one you want:
f = open(...) for i, line in enumerate(f): if i==targetLine: print line # or whatever break f.close()
Of course, to do that, you must know the number of lines in the file beforehand. If you're running a UNIX system (Linux, OS X, *BSD...), that's easily done by calling the command "wc -l <filename>" (use os.popen to do that).
enumerate() takes an iterator as an argument. The above program will read one line of the file at a time; when the target line is reached it will be printed. The file will only be read up until the target line.
Or maybe you mean that to select a target line you have to know how many lines are in the file? Yes, I suppose you do...the OP wasn't very specific about how the line is selected...in that case readlines() might be the simplest thing to do.
PS random.choice() might be handy here.
Kent
-- Max
maxnoel_fr at yahoo dot fr -- ICQ #85274019
"Look at you hacker... A pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors... How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?"
_______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
