code: def read_single(path, encoding = 'UTF-8'):
      
      assert isinstance(path, (str, _oldstr))
      data = []
      with smart_open_read(path, mode='rb', try_gzip=True) as fh:
          reader = csv.reader(fh, dialect='excel-tab', encoding=encoding)
          for l in reader:
              data.append(l[0])
      return data
docs: Reads the first column of a tab-delimited text file.
  
      The file can either be uncompressed or gzip'ed.
  
      Parameters
      ----------
      path: str
          The path of the file.
      enc: str
          The file encoding.
  
      Returns
      -------
      List of str
          A list containing the elements in the first column.