an ugly file-reading pattern

[Matt Gerrans]

Learning Python is an excellent book, but unfortunately quite out of date.
It covers Python version 1.5, whereas 2.2.2 is the current release, with 2.3
in alpha.

Anyway, the syntax to read lines from a file without loading the whole thing
is now quite simple and clean:

for line in file( filename ):
   ... do your thing ...

or if you prefer open():

for line in open( filename ):
   ... do your thing ...