Read in some data. Skip

simple_file_processing.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
"""
A simple script showing how to read data from a specified
file, do some basic processing, and then print out processed 
lines to the shell. The input file is hard-coded in the text.

USAGE from command line

    python simple_file_processing.py


"""

# Use a list comprehension to read in all the lines from your file
data = [line for line in open('/path/to/source_data.txt', 'rb')]

# Skip the first 5 lines using slice notation, and start processing from line 6
# Remember that Python lists are zero-indexed, so the first line is index 0, 
# second line is index 1, etc.
for line in data[5:]:
    # Strip white space from start and end of line
    clean_line = line.strip()
    # Do some processing if the line contains text (ie is not a blank line)
    if clean_line:
        # Remove double-quotes and right parens, replace left parens with dash  
        # Notice that you can chain your string methods. 
        processed_line = clean_line.replace('"', '').replace(')','').replace('(','-')
        print processed_line
    else:
        # This will print a blank line to shell
        # If you don't want blank lines, you can remove this else clause
        print