Print multiple lines between two specific lines (keywords) from a text file

Question

I have a textfile and want to print the lines between two other lines, using Python 3.5 on Windows. I want to print the characters of a drama to another file. The textfile looks like this:

...
Characters:
Peter, the king.
Anna, court lady.
Michael, caretaker.
Andre, soldier.
Tina, baker.
First scene.
...

I want to print all the character names between the lines "Characters:" and "First scene." My first try was:

newfile = open('newfile.txt', 'w')
with open('drama.txt', 'r') as f:
for line in f:
    if line.startswith('Characters:'):
        print(next(f), file = newfile)

But this only prints one line and i need several lines and the iteration with the next() function led always to a StopIteration Error after printing one line. So is there a way to say: Print all lines between the lines "Characters:" and "First Scene."? It is not really possible to work with indices, because i'm doing it for several dramas and they have all a different number of characters.

Answer 1

You can set a boolean to know if to print a line or not:

newfile = open('newfile.txt', 'w')

printing = False

with open('drama.txt', 'r') as f:
    for line in f:
        if line.startswith('Characters:'):
            printing = True
            continue # go to next line
        elif line.startswith('First scene'):
            printing = False
            break # quit file reading

        if printing:
            print(line, file=newfile)
newfile.close()