Unable to read huge (20GB) file from CPython

Question

I have some CPython issue that I cannot understand. It all boils down to the fact that using the same code to read small text file works but cannot even read a single line from

Answer 1

Although your "test" only prints one line, that does not mean it is only reading one line from the file. For me in a \r-delimited test file, I also only get one line of output. However if I read each line in using a for loop, it still only prints one line. Or if I try readline() a second time on a multi-line file, it doesn't give any more lines.

Try opening your file with the 'rU' parameter on the same file:

f =  open('filename', 'rU')

My tests of a file with several lines of \r-delimited text give:

f = open('test.txt','r')  # Opening the "wrong" way
for line in f:
    print line

Output:

abcdef

Then with rU:

f = open('test.txt','rU')
for line in f:
    print line

Output:

abcdef

abcdef

abcdef

abcdef

abcdef

---

EDIT: In support of Joran's explanation, this test pretty much shows it to be the case that the entire file is loading and the carriage return character is causing over-printing when you see only one line of output...

f = open('test.txt','r')     #  Opening the "wrong" way again
for line in f:
    print "XXX{}YYY".format(line)

Output gets overwritten...

YYYdefdef