Quick Reference from module doc strings.

[Ron Adam]

Scott David Daniels wrote:
> Ron Adam wrote:
> 
>> ...What would be the advantage of using StringIO over list.append with 
>> ''.join()?
> 
> The advantage is more in using a function that prints as it goes
> rather than building up a large string to print.  I would call the
> print function at the bottom (with None as the print destination),
> rather than printing the result of calling the string function.

The reason I return the string to the calling function instead of 
printing it, is the person using it may not want to print it. They may 
want to send it to a file, or process it further before printing it. 
Same with the individual records.

> I just did the StringIO thing to show you that printing as you go
> needn't mean you cannot get the string value without duplicating code.
> 
> --Scott David Daniels
> Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org

I've used IO Streams,(">>" and "<<"), before in C, where I was 
continually reading to and writing from a buffer as I went. (Back when 
memory was often smaller than most files.)

I haven't played around with the StringIO module yet, and this will 
probably be more of a database application rather than just formatting 
input for output.  So for now the strings operations are fine until I 
better decide how they will get used.

Maybe further down the road I'll convert them to, or have a need for 
serialized objects, so I'll keep the STringIO module in mind. :-)

Cheers,
_Ron