How can I read large text files in Python, line by line, without loading it into memory?

Question

I need to read a large file, line by line. Lets say that file has more than 5GB and I need to read each line, but obviously I do not want to use readlines() bec

Answer 1

How about this? Divide your file into chunks and then read it line by line, because when you read a file, your operating system will cache the next line. If you are reading the file line by line, you are not making efficient use of the cached information.

Instead, divide the file into chunks and load the whole chunk into memory and then do your processing.

def chunks(file,size=1024):
    while 1:

        startat=fh.tell()
        print startat #file's object current position from the start
        fh.seek(size,1) #offset from current postion -->1
        data=fh.readline()
        yield startat,fh.tell()-startat #doesnt store whole list in memory
        if not data:
            break
if os.path.isfile(fname):
    try:
        fh=open(fname,'rb') 
    except IOError as e: #file --> permission denied
        print "I/O error({0}): {1}".format(e.errno, e.strerror)
    except Exception as e1: #handle other exceptions such as attribute errors
        print "Unexpected error: {0}".format(e1)
    for ele in chunks(fh):
        fh.seek(ele[0])#startat
        data=fh.read(ele[1])#endat
        print data