[Tutor] Parsing /etc/passwd

[Peter Otten]

Hugo Arts wrote:

>> f = open('/etc/passwd', 'r')
> users = f.readlines()
> for user in users:
      ...

You can iterate over the file directly:

for user in f:
    ...

The version using readlines() reads the whole file into a list of lines 
where the alternative just has to remember the current line. 

While it doesn't matter much for small files iterating over the file 
directly will save a lot of memory if the input file is large.

Therefore avoiding readlines() is a good habit to get into.