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That's not simple at all. Python uses the C library's fgets
function on some systems, which does not support this
feature, either, so you cannot implement it on top of fgets.

If you need to deal with different line end conventions on
various systems, Python 2.3 offers a Universal Newline
Support (PEP 278).

For uses beyond that, I recommend to read the entire file,
then do .split on the resulting string. This is the common
solution to your problem, and it works quite well.