output buffering

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    jd> When reading a large datafile, I want to print a '.' to show the
    jd> progress. This fails, I get the series of '.'s after the data has
    jd> been read. Is there a trick to fix this?

As Fredrik indicated, you need to flush the output buffer.  You might also
want to check out the progress module available from my Python Bits page:

    http://orca.mojam.com/~skip/python/

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