Having a hard time fixing this or finding any good hints about it. I'm trying to loop over one file, modify each line slightly, and then loop over a different file. If the line in the second file starts with the line from the first then the following line in the second file should be written to a third file. !/usr/bin/env python with open('ids.txt', 'rU') as f: with open('seqres.txt', 'rU') as g: for id in f: id=id.lower()[0:4]+'_'+id[4] with open(id + '.fasta', 'w') as h: for line in g: if line.startswith(''+ id): h.write(g.next()) All the correct files appear, but they are empty. Yes, I am sure the if has true cases. :-) "seqres.txt" has lines with an ID number in a certain format, each followed by a line with data. The "ids.txt" has lines with the ID numbers of interest in a different format. I want each line of data with an interesting ID number in its own file. Thanks a million to anyone with a little advice!