The obvious things: the file should be opened in read only mode; the file should be closed in the method (or opened with context so it gets automatically closed); the name of the method doesn't accurately describe what it's doing and should be changed; the method doesn't really need to exist since it's doing something that's pretty common across a code base and it's better to avoid abstracting something like this unless there's a clear need. I guess I missed talking about not loading the entire file into memory. Should've asked about the context of its use instead of making assumptions.