Moving from perl to python: questions

[Remco Gerlich]

David R. Favor wrote in comp.lang.python:
> #!/usr/local/bin/python
> 
> def slurp(filename):
> 
>    "Slurp all the lines of a file into an array"
> 
>    print filename
> 
>    try:
>       f = open(filename)
> 
>    lines = f.readlines()
> 
>    f.close()
> 
>    return lines

You use try:, but you don't catch any exceptions the open may raise.
With error checking, that could look like:

import sys

def slurp(filename):
    "Slurp all the lines of a file into an array"

    print filename

    try:
        f = open(filename)
	except IOError:
	    print "IOError: ", sys.exc_value
		return None
		
   return f.readlines()

> def chomp(lines):
>    "remove the end of line markers from array"
>    import os
>    nl_len = len(os.linesep)   # length of os dependent line seperator
>    while i < len(lines):
>       line_len = len(lines[i])
>       lines[i] = lines[i][:line_len-nl_len]

Your while has an error; you never change i. 

I'm quite sure that the length of the OS dependent line seperator
is irrelevant - unless you opened the file as binary, Python has
already translated it for you, and it's just '\n' now.

Also, instead of 'line_len-nl_len' you can just use '-nl_len'; negative
numbers count from the end, because this is such a typical case.

So line = line[:-1] cuts the \n off (well, any last character).

Also, I think making such a chomp function that takes an array is
not the right way - rather make a function that chomps one string, and
then iterate over it.

But the array version goes something like:

def chomp(lines):
    "Remove the end of line markers from an array of strings"
	for i in range(len(lines)):
	    if lines[i][-1] == '\n':
		    lines[i] = lines[i][:-1]

But there have been other solutions posted here last week; a thread
on 'chomp' came up.

> if __name__ == '__main__':
> 
>    from sys import argv
>    #from getopt import *
> 
>    #opts = getopt(sys.argv[:1],'f:')
> 
>    lines = slurp(str(argv[1:]))
> 
>    print lines

Oh wait, you're writing cat :).

Still not sure what you want to do with argv[1:]. You could join them
(import string; string.join(argv[1:])) but that gives a string like
"foo bar" if you call it with two files.

What about just:

if __name__ == '__main__':
    import sys
	for file in sys.argv[1:]:
	    lines = slurp(file)
		if lines:
		    chomp(lines)
			for line in lines:
			    print line

Instead of chomping the lines before printing them, you can also just
send them to sys.stdout, which doesn't add a newline.

Success - this language is quite different from Perl, try not to
  write Perl in Python :)
-- 
Remco Gerlich,  scarblac at pino.selwerd.nl
'Oook?'