title: Python Read Text File Column by Column
body: <p>So I have a text file that looks like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>1,989785345,"something 1",,234.34,254.123
  2,234823423,"something 2",,224.4,254.123
  3,732847233,"something 3",,266.2,254.123
  4,876234234,"something 4",,34.4,254.123
  ...
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I'm running this code right here:</p>
  
  <pre><code>file = open("file.txt", 'r')
  readFile = file.readline()
  
  lineID = readFile.split(",")
  print lineID[1]
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This lets me break up the content in my text file by "," but what I want to do is separate it into columns because I have a massive number of IDs and other things in each line. How would I go about splitting the text file into columns and call each individual row in the column one by one?</p>