Script i have to date is below and Thanks to your help i can see some daylight but I still have a few questions
1.) Are there better ways to write this? 2.) As it writes out the one group to the new file for companies it is as if it leaves blank lines behind for if I don't have the elif len (line) . 1 the inventor's file has blank lines in it. 3.) I reopened the inventor's file to get a count of lines but is there a better way to do this? Thanks in_filename = raw_input('What is the COMPLETE name of the file you would like to process? ') in_file = open(in_filename, 'rU') text = in_file.readlines() count = len(text) print "There are ", count, 'lines to process in this file' out_filename1 = raw_input('What is the COMPLETE name of the file in which you would like to save Companies? ') companies = open(out_filename1, 'aU') out_filename2 = raw_input('What is the COMPLETE name of the file in which you would like to save Inventors? ') patentdata = open(out_filename2, 'aU') for line in text: if line.endswith(')\n'): companies.write(line) elif line.endswith(') \n'): companies.write(line) elif len(line) > 1: patentdata.write(line) in_file.close() companies.close() patentdata.close() in_filename2 = raw_input('What was the name of the inventor\'s file ? ') in_file2 = open(in_filename2, 'rU') text2 = in_file2.readlines() count = len(text2) print "There are - well until we clean up more - approximately ", count, 'inventor\s in this file' _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor