Skip blank lines in dat file with for loop in Python

I'm trying to write a bit of code that reads in a dat file that has a bunch of blank lines and put them into lists to be manipulated later.

Ex:

0.92; 0.70
1.53;
1.41; 1.00
1.47; 1.08
    ;
0.73; 0.18
1.50; 1.17
    ;
    ;
1.68;

I would like to skip the lines that have blank spaces.

This is what I have so far...

file_name2 = 'Gliese.dat'

filein2 = open(file_name2, 'r')
lines2 = filein2.readlines()
data2 = []
filein2.close()

for line in lines2:
    data2.append(line)
    
for i in data2:
    items2 = i.split(';')
    if items2[0]=='' or items2[1]=='':
        items2.strip()
    else:
        ms_U_B.append(float(items2[1]))
        ms_B_V.append(float(items2[0]))

I'm getting the error "ValueError: could not convert string to float:' ' ".

Rather new to python and would appreciate any help :)

You get the error cause you try to convert the empty spaces to float. Try this:

with open("Gliese.dat", "r")as f:

    data = []

    for line in f:
        line = line.strip()
        if line.split(";")[0] and line.split(";")[1]:
            data.append(line.rstrip("\n"))