readline() and readlines()

[rpaskudniak]

Greetings.

This is my first thread on this forum. I am learning Python from a book named "Learn to Program Using Python" (I am a VERY experienced programmer and DBA, BTW.) In the chapter on I/O I wasted no time diverging from the book's example.  My code reads a line from a file and then spits it out with a line count and length.  Here is the code, with my line numbers:

  1 #!/usr/bin/python
  2 # files1.py - first program to play with files
  3 #
  4 filename = "justsome.txt"
  5
  6 inp = open(filename, "r")
  7 lc = 0
  8
  9 for one_line in inp.readlines() :
 10   lc += 1     # Bump up lines-read count
 11   one_line = one_line.rstrip('\n')
 12   ll = len(one_line)
 13   print "Input line[%d] is %d chars: %s" % (lc, ll, one_line)
 14
 15 # Done printing...
 16 #
 17 inp.close

Here, the output looks just as expected:
$ ./files1.py

Input line[1] is 22 chars: This is the first line
Input line[2] is 18 chars: and this is second
Input line[3] is 35 chars: I'm a little teapot short and stout
Input line[4] is 36 chars: Pour me out into the forest primeval
Input line[5] is 36 chars: THe murmuing poines and the hemlocks

Next, the book discusses using readline() rather than readlines().  Of course I gotta try that (in line 9). And of course it barfs in my face.  Here is the output of that:
Input line[1] is 1 chars: T
Input line[2] is 1 chars: h
Input line[3] is 1 chars: i
Input line[4] is 1 chars: s
Input line[5] is 1 chars:
Input line[6] is 1 chars: i
Input line[7] is 1 chars: s
Input line[8] is 1 chars:
Input line[9] is 1 chars: t
Input line[10] is 1 chars: h
Input line[11] is 1 chars: e
Input line[12] is 1 chars:
Input line[13] is 1 chars: f
Input line[14] is 1 chars: i
Input line[15] is 1 chars: r
Input line[16] is 1 chars: s
Input line[17] is 1 chars: t
Input line[18] is 1 chars:
Input line[19] is 1 chars: l
Input line[20] is 1 chars: i
Input line[21] is 1 chars: n
Input line[22] is 1 chars: e
Input line[23] is 0 chars:

There are two weirdnesses about this:

1. It is accepting only one character at a time.  I have googled this issue and found the answers wanting.  And searching this forum with so general a string will get me a haystack when I need the needle.
   
2. It stopped reading after the first line.  Otherwise the output would have been a line for every blessed character in the input file.
   

So my obvious questions are:

• How do I make readline() read a full line at each call?
  
• Why did it stop after the first line?
  
• Not that serious here but why isn't the len() function a string method?
  

Thank you.

-- Rasputin (my middle name is Concise ) Paskudniak