The windows python.exe interpreter hangs processing large files.

[Tim Peters]

[gradha at iname.com]
> I have tried to use some Linux scripts I have under Windows, and the
> python.exe ran in a dos Box under Win98 just hangs when it has to
> process slightly big text files (over 20 KB). Could it be just because
> I use the DOTALL option in regular expressions?

No:  the regexp engine is the same on both platforms.

> Under Linux everything goes blazing fast, and since everything hangs
> I don't know what to do or how to debug it, especially because Windows
> is not my native work environment and don't master any tools there.

Stick in print statements to determine *where* it hangs.  Then whittle it
down to a minimal case.  The most frequent cause of Linux->Windows Python
porting problems is neglecting to open binary files in binary mode.