Python truncate lines as they are read

Question

I have an application that reads lines from a file and runs its magic on each line as it is read. Once the line is read and properly processed, I would like to delete the li

Answer 1

A related post has what seems a good strategy to do that, see How can I run the first process from a list of processes stored in a file and immediately delete the first line as if the file was a queue and I called "pop"?

I have used it as follows:

  import os;

  tasklist_file = open(tasklist_filename, 'rw');  
  first_line = tasklist_file.readline();
  temp = os.system("sed -i -e '1d' " + tasklist_filename); # remove first line from task file;

I'm not sure it works on Windows. Tried it on a mac and it did do the trick.