#!/usr/bin/env python TRESHOLD = 45 SHOW = 6 LOGF = "/home/efritz/irclogs/binaryshadow/#bso.log" f = open(LOGF, "r+") log = f.read() f.close() log = log.split("\n")[-SHOW:] newlog = [] for line in log: if len(line) >= TRESHOLD: line = line[:TRESHOLD] newlog.append(line) print "\n".join(newlog)