[perl-python] 20050121 file reading & writing

[Bob Smith]

Erik Max Francis wrote:
> Bob Smith wrote:
> 
>> To do this efficiently on a large file (dozens or hundreds of megs), 
>> you should use the 'sizehint' parameter so as not to use too much memory:
>>
>> sizehint = 0
>> mylist = f.readlines(sizehint)
> 
> 
> It doesn't make any difference.  .readlines reads the entire file into 
> memory at once.
> 

Are you sure, the docs say this:

"f.readlines() returns a list containing all the lines of data in the 
file. If given an optional parameter sizehint, it reads that many bytes 
from the file and enough more to complete a line, and returns the lines 
from that. This is often used to allow efficient reading of a large file 
by lines, but without having to load the entire file in memory. Only 
complete lines will be returned."

http://docs.python.org/tut/node9.html