another question

[Skip Montanaro]

    Mark> the file has spaces between the elements but the delimiter that
    Mark> really separates them is a "|".
    ... 
    Mark> the problem is that i don't know how to get rid of the "|"
    Mark> characters so these show up in the output.

Python 2.3 (currently in beta test) has a csv module.  You should be able to
adapt it easily to read your data.  Not having seen your data, I will take a
stab at it:

    import csv
    class dialect(csv.dialect):
        delimiter = '|'
        skipinitialspace = True
        quotechar = '"'
        doublequote = True

    reader = csv.reader(file("xxx.dat"), dialect=dialect)
    for row in reader:
        print row

You can also use the module's Sniffer class to figure out what the
properties of the data are:

    import csv
    dialect = csv.Sniffer(file("xxx.dat").read(8192),
                          delimiters=["|"])

    reader = csv.reader(file("xxx.dat"), dialect=dialect)
    for row in reader:
        print row

If you have field names you can use the DictReader class to return
dictionaries instead of tuples:

    import csv
    dialect = csv.Sniffer(file("xxx.dat").read(8192),
                          delimiters=["|"])

    reader = csv.DictReader(file("xxx.dat"),
                            fieldnames=("f1","f2",...),
                            dialect=dialect)
    for row in reader:
        print row["f1"], row["f2"]

Skip