title: how to skip the first line of a file in python
body: <p>I need to write a code to read a .txt file, which is a matrix displayed as below, and turn it into an new integer list matrix. However, I want to skip first line of this .txt file without manually deleting the file. I do not know how to do that. 
  I have written some code. It is able to display the matrix, but I am unable to get rid of the first line:</p>
  
  <pre><code>def display_matrix(a_matrix):
      for row in a_matrix:
          print(row)
      return a_matrix
  
  def numerical_form_of(a_list):
      return [int(a_list[i]) for i in range(len(a_list))]
  
  def get_scoring_matrix():
      scoring_file = open("Scoring Matrix")
      row_num = 0
      while row_num &lt;= NUMBER_OF_FRAGMENTS:
          content_of_line = scoring_file.readline()
          content_list = content_of_line.split('   ')
          numerical_form = numerical_form_of(content_list[1:])
          scoring_matrix = []
          scoring_matrix.append(numerical_form)
          row_num += 1
          #print(scoring_matrix)
          display_matrix(scoring_matrix)
      # (Complement): row_num = NUMBER_OF_FRAGMENTS
      return scoring_matrix
  
  get_scoring_matrix()
  </code></pre>
  
  <hr>
  
  <pre><code>Scoring Matrix is a .txt file: 
      1   2   3   4   5   6   7
  1   0   1   1   1   1   1   1
  2   0   0   1   1   1   1   1
  3   0   0   0   1   1   1   1
  4   0   0   0   0   1   1   1
  5   0   0   0   0   0   1   1
  6   0   0   0   0   0   0   1
  7   0   0   0   0   0   0   0
  </code></pre>
  
  <hr>
  
  <pre><code>The result of my code: 
  [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
  [0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1]
  [0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1]
  [0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1]
  [0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1]
  [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1]
  [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1]
  [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]
  </code></pre>