import bz2 f1 = bz2.BZ2File(r'file.txt.bz2', 'r') f2 = open(r'file.txt', 'r') lines = 0 while True: line1 = f1.readline() line2 = f2.readline() if line1 == '': break lines += 1 if line1 != line2: print 'line number: %d' % lines print repr(line1) print repr(line2) f1.close() f2.close()