title: lists and reading from file comma separated elements
body: <p>Here is my code </p>
  
  <pre><code>#course registration
  list_courses=[]
  for line in open("courses.txt",'r').readlines():
      list_courses.append(line.strip())
  print ("Gathering course information from file: \n",list_courses)
  close("courses.txt")
  list_student=[]
  for line in open("students.txt",'r').readlines():
      list_student.append(line.strip())
  print("Here is student info: \n",list_student)
  close("students.txt")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>this is giving me errors when I try to close the files. How do I close, I am basically reading contents of file and storing them in a list. Now later on want to close the open files.There I get error.</p>
  
  <p><em>I edited the code as per suggestions below.</em>
  The new code is </p>
  
  <pre><code>list_courses=[]
  with open("courses.txt",'r') as myfile1:
        list_courses=myfile1.readlines()
        list_courses=[x.strip() for x in list_courses]
  
  print ("Gathering course information from file: \n",list_courses)
  
  list_student=[]
  with open("students.txt",'r') as myfile1:
        list_student=myfile1.readlines()
        list_student=[x.strip() for x in list_student]
  
  print("Here is student info: \n",list_student)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The information in courses.txt is </p>
  
  <pre><code>cs101,C programming
  cs102,Digital logic and design
  cs103,Electrical engineering
  cs231,IT networks
  cs232,IT Workshop
  cs233,IT programming
  cs301,Compilers and automata
  cs302,Operating Systems
  cs303,Networks
  cs401,Game Theory
  cs402,Systems Programming
  cs403,Automata
  ec101,Digitization
  ec102,Analog cicuit design
  ec103,IP Telephony
  ec201,Wireless Network
  ec202,Microwave engineering
  ec203,Antenna
  ec301,Maths2
  ec302,Theory of Circuits
  ec303,PCB design
  ec401,PLC programming
  ec402,Scada
  ec403,VLSI
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>When I run the code I get output </p>
  
  <pre><code>Gathering course information from file: 
  
       ['cs101,C programming', 'cs102,Digital logic and design', 'cs103,Electrical engineering', 'cs231,IT networks', 'cs232,IT Workshop', 'cs233,IT programming', 'cs301,Compilers and automata', 'cs302,Operating Systems', 'cs303,Networks', 'cs401,Game Theory', 'cs402,Systems Programming', 'cs403,Automata', 'ec101,Digitization', 'ec102,Analog cicuit design', 'ec103,IP Telephony', 'ec201,Wireless Network', 'ec202,Microwave engineering', 'ec203,Antenna', 'ec301,Maths2', 'ec302,Theory of Circuits', 'ec303,PCB design', 'ec401,PLC programming', 'ec402,Scada', 'ec403,VLSI']
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Instead of it what I want is the input cs101 from the first line of courses.txt to go in list_courses[0] and list_courses[1] to have c programming i.e.
  list_courses[0]=cs101
  list_courses[1]=C programming</p>
  
  <p>So I tried methods where programe have taken a line and read the line stored that line as an element of list but there is a comma which separates two elements in courses.txt and comma separated values should be separate list elements.</p>