Richard D. Moores wrote: > f = open("factors.txt", 'rb') > data = pickle.load(f) > f.close f.close looks up the close method but doesn't invoke it; you need f.close(). Alternatively use a with statement: with open("factors.txt", "rb") as f: data = pickle.load(f) This will close the file even if an exception occurs when trying to unpickle the data.