import mmap import contextlib with open('lorem.txt', 'r') as f: with contextlib.closing(mmap.mmap(f.fileno(), 0, access=mmap.ACCESS_READ) ) as m: print 'First 10 bytes via read :', m.read(10) print 'First 10 bytes via slice:', m[:10] print '2nd 10 bytes via read :', m.read(10) #//python/8166