use awk

awk '/default = ALL/{
print "default = DES-168"
print "default = RC2-128"
print "default = RC4-128"
print "#"$0
next}1' file

better still, no need grep

top | awk '/root/{ sum += $10 }END {print sum}'

one method i always use is the os.path.join() method.

dir = os.path.join("C:\\","documents and settings","user","desktop")
starcraftpath = os.path.join(dir,"starcraft.exe")

takes care of the...

if in the file, the content is indeed this:

[1,2,3,4]

then when you read the file line by line, you can use eval() to turn it into a list

for line in open("file"):
alist = eval(line)
...

I did not change the syntax. Its how variables are defined in Windows batch shell.
If you open a command prompt and work your batch commands from there using for loops, you have to use %i (or some...