Python 3:

with open("datafile") as myfile:
    head = [next(myfile) for x in range(N)]
print(head)

Python 2:

with open("datafile") as myfile:
    head = [next(myfile) for x in xrange(N)]
print head

下面是另一种方法(Python 2和3都是):

from itertools import islice

with open("datafile") as myfile:
    head = list(islice(myfile, N))
print(head)

如果您有一个非常大的文件，并假设您希望输出为numpy数组，则使用np。Genfromtxt将冻结您的计算机。以我的经验来看，这样好多了:

def load_big_file(fname,maxrows):
'''only works for well-formed text file of space-separated doubles'''

rows = []  # unknown number of lines, so use list

with open(fname) as f:
    j=0        
    for line in f:
        if j==maxrows:
            break
        else:
            line = [float(s) for s in line.split()]
            rows.append(np.array(line, dtype = np.double))
            j+=1
return np.vstack(rows)  # convert list of vectors to array

如果你想快速读取第一行并且不关心性能，你可以使用.readlines()返回列表对象，然后对列表进行切片。

例如，前5行:

with open("pathofmyfileandfileandname") as myfile:
    firstNlines=myfile.readlines()[0:5] #put here the interval you want

注意:整个文件是读取的，所以不是最好的从性能的角度来看，但它 是易于使用，快速编写和易于记忆，所以如果你只是想执行 一些一次性计算非常方便

print firstNlines

与其他答案相比，一个优点是可以轻松地选择行范围，例如跳过前10行[10:30]或最后10行[:-10]或只选择偶数行[::2]。

有一个简单的方法来获取前10行:

with open('fileName.txt', mode = 'r') as file:
    list = [line.rstrip('\n') for line in file][:10]
    print(list)

基于gnibbler的投票结果(2009年11月20日0:27):这个类将head()和tail()方法添加到文件对象。

class File(file):
    def head(self, lines_2find=1):
        self.seek(0)                            #Rewind file
        return [self.next() for x in xrange(lines_2find)]

    def tail(self, lines_2find=1):  
        self.seek(0, 2)                         #go to end of file
        bytes_in_file = self.tell()             
        lines_found, total_bytes_scanned = 0, 0
        while (lines_2find+1 > lines_found and
               bytes_in_file > total_bytes_scanned): 
            byte_block = min(1024, bytes_in_file-total_bytes_scanned)
            self.seek(-(byte_block+total_bytes_scanned), 2)
            total_bytes_scanned += byte_block
            lines_found += self.read(1024).count('\n')
        self.seek(-total_bytes_scanned, 2)
        line_list = list(self.readlines())
        return line_list[-lines_2find:]

用法:

f = File('path/to/file', 'r')
f.head(3)
f.tail(3)

我所做的就是用熊猫形来称呼N行。我认为性能不是最好的，但是举个例子，如果N=1000:

import pandas as pd
yourfile = pd.read_csv('path/to/your/file.csv',nrows=1000)