title: using data from a txt file in python
body: <p>I'm learning python and now I'm having some problems with reading and analyzing txt files. I want to open in python a <code>.txt</code> file that contains many lines and in each line I have one fruit and it's price.</p>
  
  <p>I would like to know how to make python recognize their prices as a number (since it recognizes as a string when I use <code>readlines()</code>) so then I could use the numbers in some simple functions to calculate the minimum price that I have to sell the fruits to obtain profit.</p>
  
  <p>Any ideas of how to do it?</p>