If you're using this as an interactive command to help you populate a database, as you appear to be, don't open the file more than once. As previously suggested you should also put all your strings together and then write them to the database in one go.
I don't know if you've thought about this yet, but you'll need a way to stop when you're done inputing names and ages! Here are two thoughts you can look into: 1) Check for a special character (or lack thereof). For example, if the fields are blank you could exit the loop using the 'break' statement. Or 2) Catching a 'KeyboardInterrupt' exception using the 'try...except' statements. Without doing it for you, (I assume this is homework) these are some suggested changes: out_file = open('persons.txt', 'w') while True: name = raw_input("What is the name: ") age = raw_input("What is the age: ") out_file.write("name:%s\nage: %s\n\n" (name, age)) # We'll never get this far unless we figure out a way to stop the loop! out_file.close() Keep at it and best of luck! -Modulok- _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor