Skip first couple of lines while reading lines in Python file

Question

I want to skip the first 17 lines while reading a text file.

Let's say the file looks like:

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 good stuff 

I just want the good stuff. What I'm doing is a lot more complicated, but this is the part I'm having trouble with.

Answer 1

Use a slice, like below:

with open('yourfile.txt') as f:     lines_after_17 = f.readlines()[17:] 

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If the file is too big to load in memory:

with open('yourfile.txt') as f:     for _ in range(17):         next(f)     for line in f:         # do stuff 

Answer 2

Use itertools.islice, starting at index 17. It will automatically skip the 17 first lines.

import itertools with open('file.txt') as f:     for line in itertools.islice(f, 17, None):  # start=17, stop=None         # process lines