Reading a file and displaying the sum of names within that file
===

What I would like the final code to execute is read a string of names in a text document named, 'names.txt'.  Then tell the program to calculate how many names there are in that file and display the amount of names. The code I have so far was meant to display the sum of the numbers in a text file, but it was close enough to the program I need now that I think I may be able to rework it to gather the amount of strings/names and display that instead of the sum.

Here is the code so far:

    def main():
        #initialize an accumulator.
        total = 0.0

        try:
            # Open the file.
            myfile = open('names.txt', 'r')

            # Read and display the file's contents.
            for line in myfile:
                amount = float(line)
                total += amount

            # Close the file.
            myfile.close()

        except IOError:
            print('An error occured trying to read the file.')

        except ValueError:
            print('Non-numeric data found in the file.')

        except:
            print('An error occured.')

    # Call the main function.
    main()

I am still really new to Python programming so please don't be too harsh on me. If anyone can figure out how to rework this to display the amount of numbers/names instead of the sum of numbers.  I would greatly appreciate it.  If this program cannot be reworked, I would be happy to settle for a new solution.