Beginner question: use function to read text file

[Luke]

I'm pretty stuck at the moment and wondering if anyone can spot the problem. 
Trying to create a function that will read a text file into a list and 
return that list.

I wrote the following function and saved it as 'fileloader.py'

def fileload(fname):
    infile=open(fname)
    dates =[]
    times=[]
    open=[]
    high=[]
    low=[]
    close=[]
    vol=[]
    count=0
    for line in infile:
            item=line.split()
            dates.append(item[0])
            times.append(item[1])
            open.append(item[2])
            high.append(item[3])
            low.append(item[4])
            close.append(item[5])
            vol.append(item[6])
            #print 
dates[count],times[count],open[count],high[count],low[count],vol[count]
            count=count+1


    return dates,times,open,high,low,close


Then I executed the following script (merge contract v1.py):

import fileloader
filename='c:/Python24/test/testdata2.txt'
fileloader.fileload(filename)


I then get the following error messages:

Traceback (most recent call last)
File "C:\Python24\test\merge contract v1.py", in line3, in?
fileloader.fileload(filename)
File ("C:\Python24\text\fileloader.py", in line2, in fileload
infile=open(fname)
UnboundLocalError: local variable 'open' referenced before assignment
Script terminated

Thanks for any help,
Luke