Efficient multi-slicing technique?

[python at bdurham.com]

Is there an efficient way to multi-slice a fixed with string into
individual fields that's logically equivalent to the way one
would slice a delimited string using .split()?
Background: I'm parsing some very large, fixed line-width text
files that have weekly columns of data (52 data columns plus
related data). My current strategy is to loop through a list of
slice()'s to build a list of the specific field values for each
line. This is fine for small files, but seems inefficient. I'm
hoping that there's a built-in (C based) or 3rd party module that
is specifically designed for doing multiple field extractions at
once.
Thank you,
Malcolm
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