Sorry, didn't get to finish my script. Have to figure out the deal with gmail and the tab key someday.
myfile = '/somewhere/somefile.txt' sizes = [16,4,8,8,8] fd = open(myfile,r) data = [] for line in fd.readlines() : a = [] idx1 = 0 for l in sizes : idx2 = idx1 + l a.append(line[idx1:idx2]) idx1 += l data.append(a) fd.close() print data This isn't tested, and there are probably more elegant ways to do it, but for quick and dirty I think it should work. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list