Reading unformatted big-endian files

[John Machin]

On 11/08/2006 8:35 PM, Andrea Gavana wrote:

> I hope performances will not change so much: fortran is
> very fast in reading files (but I use it only in this case, I love to
> use Python)... well, let's see :-D

<ot> Well FORTRAN would have to have *something* going for it :-)
I vaguely recall in a previous incarnation tarting up a vanilla ratfor 
"compiler" with switch statements and macros and all sorts of goodies so 
that life was less unbearable :-) [this was *before* f77]
</ot>

Suggestions:
(1) Upgrade to 2.5 as soon as it goes final -- struct's performance has 
been improved.
(2) Consider the possibility of not unpacking all three variables if you 
don't need to -- for example if you are ignoring everything until you 
hit a record that starts with 'DIMENS  ', you don't need to unpack 
anything, just do:

if buff[:8] == 'DIMENS  ':

How big are your files, anyway?

Cheers,
John