我相信内存映射文件将是最快的解决方案。我尝试了四个函数:由OP发布的函数(opcount);对文件中的行进行简单迭代(simplecount);带有内存映射字段(mmap)的Readline (mapcount);以及Mykola Kharechko (buffcount)提供的缓冲区读取解决方案。

我将每个函数运行五次，并计算出120万在线文本文件的平均运行时间。

Windows XP, Python 2.5, 2GB RAM, 2ghz AMD处理器

以下是我的结果:

mapcount : 0.465599966049
simplecount : 0.756399965286
bufcount : 0.546800041199
opcount : 0.718600034714

编辑:Python 2.6的数字:

mapcount : 0.471799945831
simplecount : 0.634400033951
bufcount : 0.468800067902
opcount : 0.602999973297

因此，对于Windows/Python 2.6，缓冲区读取策略似乎是最快的

代码如下:

from __future__ import with_statement
import time
import mmap
import random
from collections import defaultdict

def mapcount(filename):
    f = open(filename, "r+")
    buf = mmap.mmap(f.fileno(), 0)
    lines = 0
    readline = buf.readline
    while readline():
        lines += 1
    return lines

def simplecount(filename):
    lines = 0
    for line in open(filename):
        lines += 1
    return lines

def bufcount(filename):
    f = open(filename)                  
    lines = 0
    buf_size = 1024 * 1024
    read_f = f.read # loop optimization

    buf = read_f(buf_size)
    while buf:
        lines += buf.count('\n')
        buf = read_f(buf_size)

    return lines

def opcount(fname):
    with open(fname) as f:
        for i, l in enumerate(f):
            pass
    return i + 1


counts = defaultdict(list)

for i in range(5):
    for func in [mapcount, simplecount, bufcount, opcount]:
        start_time = time.time()
        assert func("big_file.txt") == 1209138
        counts[func].append(time.time() - start_time)

for key, vals in counts.items():
    print key.__name__, ":", sum(vals) / float(len(vals))

为什么下面的方法行不通呢?

import sys

# input comes from STDIN
file = sys.stdin
data = file.readlines()

# get total number of lines in file
lines = len(data)

print lines

在这种情况下，len函数使用输入行作为确定长度的方法。

def file_len(full_path):
  """ Count number of lines in a file."""
  f = open(full_path)
  nr_of_lines = sum(1 for line in f)
  f.close()
  return nr_of_lines

这个呢

def file_len(fname):
  counts = itertools.count()
  with open(fname) as f: 
    for _ in f: counts.next()
  return counts.next()

如果你的文件中的所有行都是相同的长度(并且只包含ASCII字符)*，你可以非常便宜地执行以下操作:

fileSize     = os.path.getsize( pathToFile )  # file size in bytes
bytesPerLine = someInteger                    # don't forget to account for the newline character
numLines     = fileSize // bytesPerLine

*如果使用像é这样的unicode字符，我怀疑需要更多的努力来确定一行中的字节数。

简单的方法:

1)

>>> f = len(open("myfile.txt").readlines())
>>> f

430

>>> f = open("myfile.txt").read().count('\n')
>>> f
430
>>>

num_lines = len(list(open('myfile.txt')))