This is more a question for StackOverflow, but here goes... Since Windows paths use backslashes, you should either escape all of them (not just the \U), or use

This is more a question for StackOverflow, but here goes... Since Windows paths use backslashes, you should either escape all of them (not just the \U), or use raw strings: filename = "c:\\Users\\foo.txt" filename = r"c:\Users\foo.txt" As it happens, Unix-style forward slashes usually work fine too on Windows: filename = "c:/Users/foo.txt" This way, you don't have to rename your files and directories. :-) Also, if the contents of the line are delimited by spaces, consider the split() method: "a b c".split() => ["a", "b", "c"] If the format isn't actually as easy as that, take a look at the re and csv modules.