how to extract a portion of data from text lines by python 2

[alex0516]

I have a text file including a string header and data body. The contents seem like this:

this is a technical data file....................COMMENT
the creator : Adams............................COMMENT
2017.05.10.......................................THE FIRST TIME
.........................................................END OF HEADER
OA 10123.4532 12345.0102 -1827734.3475 -1893255.1023 45.12 23.01 8923.12
XB 10125.4132 13345.0702 -1843734.7875 -1834255.1913 44.12 23.02 8924.12
...
...
.........................................................END OF FILE

I need to write some codes with python 2 to extract only portions of data from the lines and get like:

10123.45 12345.01 -1827734.34 -1893255.10
10125.41 13345.07 -1843734.78 -1834255.19
...

How can I get them? Please give some suggestions. Thanks

BTW, I thought to use the ‘read’ with formmated strings, but I found no resources online about that use. I just found some modules like struct. But is there any concise method to finish that? After all the more modules could decrease the efficiency of the program.
I tried the following codes to read the data lines but not succeeded:
with open('example.txt', 'r') as f:
... line = f.readline('%2s%11.2f%11.2f%14.2f%%14.2f')
....

BTW, all the commas is actually the blank space, 'cause I do not know why the space was canceled automatically for the header lines.

[Larz60+]

write out each line without formatting, and then do your formatting when the data is read back in
This can be done in a module that is called by any program that needs the data.

A better solution, is to format the data beforehand in a structure, like a list or dictionary that
can be saved in json format using json.dump

Then when you read it back in with json.load it will already be formated.

[wavic]

Do all lines you are interested in starting with 'OA' or 'XB'? I'd read each line and check if starts with one of these. Split the line to get it as a list. Slice it from 1 to 5. Then using list comprehension create e new list as rid of the last two symbols of each number. Finally, join it. The for loop will get four lines of code and you are done.