最直观的两种方法是:

逐行迭代文件，并在N行之后进行换行。 使用next()方法逐行迭代文件N次。(这本质上只是顶部答案的不同语法。)

代码如下:

# Method 1:
with open("fileName", "r") as f:
    counter = 0
    for line in f:
        print line
        counter += 1
        if counter == N: break

# Method 2:
with open("fileName", "r") as f:
    for i in xrange(N):
        line = f.next()
        print line

底线是，只要不使用readlines()或将整个文件枚举到内存中，您就有很多选择。

N = 10
with open("file.txt", "a") as file:  # the a opens it in append mode
    for i in range(N):
        line = next(file).strip()
        print(line)

对于前5行，简单地做:

N=5
with open("data_file", "r") as file:
    for i in range(N):
       print file.next()

我想通过读取整个文件来处理小于n行的文件

def head(filename: str, n: int):
    try:
        with open(filename) as f:
            head_lines = [next(f).rstrip() for x in range(n)]
    except StopIteration:
        with open(filename) as f:
            head_lines = f.read().splitlines()
    return head_lines

这要归功于约翰·拉·鲁伊和伊莲·伊利耶夫。使用异常句柄函数以获得最佳性能

修改1:感谢FrankM的反馈，处理文件存在和读取权限我们可以进一步增加

import errno
import os

def head(filename: str, n: int):
    if not os.path.isfile(filename):
        raise FileNotFoundError(errno.ENOENT, os.strerror(errno.ENOENT), filename)  
    if not os.access(filename, os.R_OK):
        raise PermissionError(errno.EACCES, os.strerror(errno.EACCES), filename)     
   
    try:
        with open(filename) as f:
            head_lines = [next(f).rstrip() for x in range(n)]
    except StopIteration:
        with open(filename) as f:
            head_lines = f.read().splitlines()
    return head_lines

您可以使用第二个版本，也可以使用第一个版本，稍后再处理文件异常。从性能的角度来看，检查是快速的，而且大部分是免费的

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

这适用于Python 2和3:

from itertools import islice

with open('/tmp/filename.txt') as inf:
    for line in islice(inf, N, N+M):
        print(line)