In [1]:f = open('datafile', 'r') IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'datafile' In [2]:f = open('.datatrans_infile', 'r') In [3]:from scitools.filetable import read_columns In [4]:x, y = read_columns(f) In [5]:x Out[5]:array([ 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4]) In [6]:y Out[6]:array([ 1.1 , 1.8 , 2.22222, 1.8 ])