Building Time Based Bins

[Michael Spencer]

MCD wrote:
> Hi Michael, thanks for responding. I actually don't use a method to get
> each bin... 

That's because you picked the wrong suggestion ;-)  No, seriously, you can do it 
easily with this approach:

> the bin outputs are nested in the loop. Here's my code:

> data_file = open('G:\file.txt')
> DUMMY = 9999
> bintm = DUMMY
bins = []
> for line in data_file:
>     fields = line.strip().split()
>     if not line: continue
>     ilist = [int(time), int(a)]
(BTW, there must be more to your code than you have shared for the above line to 
execute without raising an exception - where are 'time' and 'a' initially bound?
BTW2, 'time' is the name of a stdlib module, so it's bad practice to use it as 
an identifier)
> #    print "ilist:", ilist
>     klock, a = ilist
>     newbintm = ((klock + 4) // 5 * 5 ) % 2400
>     print "bintm = %d, newbintm = %d, a = %d" % (bintm, newbintm, a)
> # the above is the raw data and now the bin loop
>     if bintm == 9999:
>         bintm = newbintm
>         binlo = a
>     elif bintm == newbintm:
>         binlo = min(binl, t)
>     else:
>         print "  ==>> %04d %2d" % (bintm, binl) ## this is the bin
This is where you've declared that you have a bin, so add it to the bins cache:
	bins.append((bintm, binl))
>         bintm = newbintm
>         binl = a
> 
Michael