Building Time Based Bins

[Michael Spencer]

MCD wrote:
> Hello, I'm new to python and this group and am trying to build some
> bins and was wondering if any of you could kindly help me out. I'm a
> bit lost on how to begin.
> 
> I have some text files that have a time filed along with 2 other fields
> formatted like this >>
> 
> 1231 23 56
> 1232 25 79
> 1234 26 88
> 1235 22 34
> 1237 31 85
> 1239 35 94
> 
> This goes on throughout a 12hr. period. I'd like to be able to place
> the low and high values of the additional fields in a single line
> divided into 5min intervals. So it would look something like this >>
> 
> 1235 22 88
> 1240 31 94
> 
> I hope that makes sense. Should I be using a module like numarray for
> this, or is it possible to just use the native functions? Any ideas
> would help me very much.
> 
> Thank you - Marcus
> 
This sort of thing would do it:



from itertools import groupby

def splitter(iterable):
     """Takes a line-based iterator, yields a list of values per line
         edit this for more sophisticated line-based parsing if required"""
     for line in iterable:
         yield  [int(item) for item in line.split()]

def groupkey(data):
     """Groups times by 5 min resolution.  Note this version doesn't work
          exactly like the example - so fix if necessary"""
     time = data[0]
     return time / 100 * 100 + (time % 100) / 5 * 5

def grouper(iterable):
     """Groups and summarizes the lines"""
     for time, data in groupby(iterable, groupkey):
         data_x = zip(*data)             #transform the data from cols to rows
         print time, min(data_x[1]), max(data_x[2])



# Exercise it:

source = """1231 23 56
1232 25 79
1234 26 88
1235 22 34
1237 31 85
1239 35 94
"""
  >>> grouper(splitter(source.splitlines()))
  1230 23 88
  1235 22 94
  >>>

Note this groups by the time at the end of each 5 mins, rather than the 
beginning as in your example.  If this needs changing, fix groupkey

HTH

Michael