I tried to process a text file (with UTF-8 encoding) which has 
contents like this:


FILE=India
asbds
FILE=Indonasia
ssgsds
FILE=Africa
DBGDGDFG

When I use the below code:
>>> f = open("e:\\temp\\file.txt", 'r')
>>> lines = f.readlines()
>>> for line in lines:
	if line.startswith("FILE="):
		print line.strip("FILE=")


I get output as:
ndia

ndonasia

Africa


I is always stripped if it follows the substring that I want to strip 
off.

Am I doing something wrong here or is this a bug in Python?

-Govind

It's not a bug. Please read the documentation of the split() method:
   http://docs.python.org/library/stdtypes.html#str.split

If you want to get the value after "=", use:
   value = line.split("FILE=", 1)[1]
or:
   value = line[len('FILE='):]
or:
   value = line.partition('FILE=')[2]
or:
   etc.