Break multiple lines in a text file into a list of lists <p>I am working with a text file ex:</p> <pre><code>blahblahblahblahblahblahblah blahblahblahblahblahblahblah start important1a important1b important2a important2b end blahblahblahblahblahblahblah </code></pre> <p>What I want is to get an output like</p> <pre><code>["'important1a', 'important1b'", "'important2a', 'important2b'"] </code></pre> <p>Where each important line is split into individual elements, but they are grouped together by line in one list.</p> <p>I have gotten close with this:</p> <pre><code>import shlex useful = [] with open('test.txt', 'r') as myfile: for line in myfile: if "start" in line: break for line in myfile: if "end" in line: break useful.append(line) data = "".join(useful) split_data = shlex.split(data) print split_data </code></pre> <p>This outputs:</p> <pre><code>['important1a', 'important1b', 'important2a', 'important2b'] </code></pre> <p>There is no distinction between lines.</p> <p>How can I modify this to distinguish each line? Thanks!</p>