Q:

Search for a specific value in a specific column with Python

I've got a text file that is tab delimited and I'm trying to figure out how to search for a value in a specific column in this file.
I think i need to use the csv import but have been unsuccessful so far. Can someone point me in the right direction?
Thanks!
**Update**
Thanks for everyone's updates. I know I could probably use awk for this but simply for practice, I am trying to finish it in python. 
I am getting the following error now:
if row.split(' ')[int(searchcolumn)] == searchquery:
IndexError: list index out of range
And here is the snippet of my code:
#open the directory and find all the files
for subdir, dirs, files in os.walk(rootdir):
    for file in files:
        f=open(file, 'r')
        lines=f.readlines()
        for line in lines:
            #the first 4 lines of the file are crap, skip them
            if linescounter > startfromline:
                with open(file) as infile:
                    for row in infile:
                        if row.split(' ')[int(searchcolumn)] == searchquery:
                            rfile = open(resultsfile, 'a')
                            rfile.writelines(line) 
                            rfile.write("\r\n")
                            print "Writing line -> " + line
                            resultscounter += 1
        linescounter += 1
        f.close()

I am taking both searchcolumn and searchquery as raw_input from the user. Im guessing the reason I am getting the list out of range now, is because it's not parsing the file correctly? 
Thanks again.

A:

You can also use the sniffer (example taken from http://docs.python.org/library/csv.html)
csvfile = open("example.csv", "rb")
dialect = csv.Sniffer().sniff(csvfile.read(1024))
csvfile.seek(0)
reader = csv.reader(csvfile, dialect)

