read a files particular line

[Peter L Hansen]

Kristóf Stróbl wrote (top-posting, but I fixed it.  You're welcome.):
 > Frank Grellert wrote:
 >> does anybody have an idea how to read a particular line of a file
 >> like awk's  awk '{if( NR==12) print $0}' filename (reads lineno 12 of
 >> filename)
 >
> If the file is not too big use:
> 
> file("filename").readlines()[11]

And if the file is "too big", there's always iterators:

print itertools.islice(open('tempx.txt'), 11, 12).next()

A little more complicated, but avoids reading the entire file
into memory.

-Peter