import sys import time f = None try: f = open("poem.txt") # Our usual file-reading idiom while True: line = f.readline() if len(line) == 0: break print line, sys.stdout.flush() print "Press ctrl+c now" # To make sure it runs for a while time.sleep(2) except IOError: print "Could not find file poem.txt" except KeyboardInterrupt: print "!! You cancelled the reading from the file." finally: if f: f.close() print "(Cleaning up: Closed the file)"