Using read() for text is quite awkward, and thankfully Python provides better tools for reading text files line by line. The first of these is readline() function:

>>> g.readline()
'What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
'
>>> g.readline()
'Out of this stony rubbish? '

Each call to readline() returns a single line of text. The returned lines are terminated by a single newline character, if there is one present in the file. The last line here does not terminate with a newline because there is no newline sequence at the end of the file. You shouldn't rely on the string returned by readline() being terminated by a newline. And remember that the universal newline support will have translated whatever the platform native newline sequence into ' '.

Once we reach the end of the file further calls to readline() return an empty string:

>>> g.readline()
''