I forgot to mention that I did a simple timeit test which doesn't show significant runtime difference 3.5 sec for dictionary case and 3.48 for list case.
def read_as_dictionary(): fil = open('myDataFile', 'r') forces = {} for region in range(25): forces[region] = {} for step in range(20000): for region in range(25): line = fil.next(); spl = line.split() forces[region] [step] = spl def read_as_list(): fil = open('myDataFile.txt', 'r') forces = [] for region in range(25): forces.append([]) for step in range(20000): for region in range(25): line = fil.next(); spl = line.split() forces[region].append(spl) Cheers, /Ben -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list