files_list = ['L_res', 'G_res', 'S_res', 'D_res'] out_file = open('LGSD_combined_res', 'w') for file_name in files_list: file = open(file_name, 'r') line = file.readline() row = line.rstrip('\n').split("\t") if row[1]!= "": print >> out_file, "LGSD\t" + row[1] break