Thanks for all your help guys, I am getting a strong consensus that f.close() should be used everywhere, reading files as well as writing files and not to rely on the PVM to do clean-up for you.
The whole topic came up because I just finished reading 'learning python' 3rd edition OReilly as a refresher where there are multiple instances of suggesting that you do the exact opposite eg ... [line.rstrip() for line in open('myfile')] ... p361 for line in open('script1.py') ... p261& p276 where it is described as 'best practice' for reading files line by line etc ... Dave -- Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor