Program to findout the maximum weight of the tree

tree_weight.py

'''
@author: A_Muneer
'''
import sys
#file_name = 'tri.txt'

def get_tree(file_name):
    with open(file_name) as myfile:
        return [line.strip().split() for line in myfile if line.strip()]

def greater(params):
    if len(params) == 1:
        return int(params[0])
    else:
        a, b = [int(x) for x in params]
        return a if a>b else b

def max_weight(tree, idx=0):
    #print "Tree now is: \n", tree
    try:
        #tree[1] to check for single element row.
        next_row, next_tree = tree [1], tree[1:]
    except:
        return greater(tree[0][idx:idx+2])#base of the tree
    else:
        row = tree[0]
        weight = int(row[idx]) + greater([max_weight(next_tree, idx),
                                      max_weight(next_tree, idx+1)])
        return weight
    
def get_max_weight(file_name):
    tree = get_tree(file_name)
    return max_weight(tree)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    file_name = sys.argv[1]
    print get_max_weight(file_name)