Sometimes you may need to read the top n
lines of a file using Python.
We start by opening the file for reading and then using a list comprehension we iterate through the range of lines we want to return:
N = 10 filename = "file.txt" with open(filename) as myfile: head = [next(myfile) for x in range(N)] print(head)
Another way you can do this is by looping through each line individually:
N = 10 filename = "file.txt" file = open(filename) for i in range(N): line = file.next().strip() print(line) # make sure to close the file when you're done file.close()