def process_dialect_translation_rules(): # Read in lines from the text file specified in sys.argv[1], stripping away # excess whitespace and discarding comments (lines that start with '##'). f_lines = [line.strip() for line in open(sys.argv[1], 'r').readlines()] f_lines = filter(lambda line: not re.match(r'##', line), f_lines) # Remove any occurances of the pattern '\s*<=>\s*'. This leaves us with a # list of lists. Each 2nd level list has two elements: the value to be # translated from and the value to be translated to. Use the sub function # from the re module to get rid of those pesky asterisks. f_lines = [re.split(r'\s*<=>\s*', line) for line in f_lines] f_lines = [re.sub(r'"', '', elem) for elem in line for line in f_lines] This function should take the lines from a file and perform some operations on the lines, such as removing any lines that begin with ##. Another operation that I wish to perform is to remove the quotation marks around the words in the line. However, when the final line of this script runs, f_lines becomes an empty lines. What happened? Requested lines of original file: ## English-Geek Reversible Translation File #1 ## (Moderate Geek) ## Created by Todd WAreham, October 2009 "TV show" <=> "STAR TREK" "food" <=> "pizza" "drink" <=> "Red Bull" "computer" <=> "TRS 80" "girlfriend" <=> "significant other"