subdir = r'W:/Mike_Lape/Antibody/Docking/Cocaine and Analogues ChemScore\norcocaine_m1' int_file = 0 list_files = [i.strip() for i in open(r'C:\Output\bestranking.lst')] for file in list_files: print file[1:len(subdir)] if file.find(subdir) > 0: print 'We need to delete:', file del(list_files[int_file]) int_file += 0 #Write the new file replacement = open(r'C:\Output\bestranking.lst', 'w') replacement.write('\n'.join(list_files)) replacement.close()