Ernesto wrote: > Thanks for the approach. I decided to use regular expressions. I'm > going by the code you posted (below). I replaced the line re.findall > line with my file handle read( ) like this: > > print re.findall(pattern, myFileHandle.read()) > > This prints out only brackets []. Is a 're.compile' perhaps necessary > ?
if you see [] that means findall didn't find anything that would match your pattern if you re.compile your pattern beforehand that would not make findall find the matched text it's only there for the optimization consider lines = [line for line in file("foo.txt").readlines() if re.match(r"\d+",line)] in this case it's better to pre-compile regexp one and use it to match all lines number = re.compile(r"\d+") lines = [line for line in file("foo.txt").readlines() if number.match(line)] fire interactive python and play with re and patterns speaking from own experience ... the propability is against you that you will make pattern right on first time Regards, Daniel -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list