f = file('input', 'r') labels = f.readline() # consume the first line of the file.
Easy Option: for line in f.readlines(): x, y = line.split() x = float(x) y = float(y)
Or, more concisely: for line in f.readlines(): x, y = map(float, line.split())
Somewhat more memory efficient:
lines_iter = iter(file('input'))
labels = lines_iter.next()
for line in lines_iter:
x, y = [float(f) for f in line.split()]By using the iterator instead of readlines, I read only one line from the file into memory at once, instead of all of them. This may or may not matter depending on the size of your files, but using iterators is generally more scalable, though of course it's not always possible.
I also opted to use a list comprehension instead of map, but this is totally a matter of personal preference -- the performance differences are probably negligible.
Steve -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
