ignore specific data

[Mike Meyer]

pkilambi at gmail.com writes:
> Hi I need help. What I want to do is If I read a file with some text
> content...
> I would like to ignore a block of lines and consider the rest..
> so if the block starts with
>
> "start of block............."
> fjesdgsdhfgdlgjklfjdgkd
> jhcsdfskdlgjkljgkfdjkgj
> "end of block"
>
> I want to ignore this while processing the file .This block could
> appear anywhere in the file.It could at the start or end or even middle
> of file content.

The best way depends on how you're going to use the data. For
instance, if you're going to be processing line at a time, you might
consider writing an interator:

# Untested code:

def filter(rawfile):
    for line in rawfile:
        if line == "start of block......":
           break
        yield line
    for line in rawfile:
        if line == "end of block":
           break
    for line in rawfile:
        yield line

Then you use it like:

myfile = open(...)
for line in filter(myfile):
    process(line)

This is a straightforward translation of your description, and avoids
loading the entire file into memory at once. You might be able to cons
up something more efficient from itertools.

   <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.