title: python file parse query
body: <p>I am trying to parse a text file so that out of three columns 2nd column (High) and 3rd column (Low) values goes to two different empty strings. But unfortunately i cannot get it work eventhough i have tried innumerable number of times. My text file looks like this</p>
  
  <pre><code>Boston July Temperatures
  -------------------------
  
  Day High Low
  ------------
  
  1 91 70
  2 84 69
  3 86 68
  4 84 68
  5 83 70
  6 80 68
  7 86 73
  8 89 71
  9 84 67
  10 83 65
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And here is my code that i have tried so far.</p>
  
  <pre><code>low_Temp=[]
  high_Temp=[]
  inFile = open('julyTemps.txt')
  for line in inFile.readlines():
      fields = line.strip(' ')
      if len(fields) &lt; 3 or not fields[0].isdigit():
          pass
      else:
          low_Temp.append(fields[2])
          high_Temp.append(fields[1])
  print low_Temp
  print high_Temp
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Finally my goal is calculate the difference between these values and plot the difference across days. i think i can do that part if i can figure out why i am not getting the correct values in the empty vectors.</p>
  
  <p>Could somebody explain me what i was doing wrong. Thanks in advance....</p>