performance question: dictionary or list, float or string?

[bkamrani at gmail.com]

Matt, really thanks for your comments!
Even thogh it was not a direct answer to my questions,
I like your coding style very much and I think you have a good point.

About the number of line in the file, because I get that info from
another
in advance. Therefore I thought it could be hard coded.

BTW, could you recommend a book or a note on points you have mentioned
so that I can learn more like that?

Thanks,
/Ben

On Dec 2, 8:37 pm, Matimus <mccre... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 2, 3:51 am, bkamr... at gmail.com wrote:
>
>
>
> > I forgot to mention that I did a simple timeit test which doesn't
> > show
> > significant runtime difference 3.5 sec for dictionary case and 3.48
> > for
> > list case.
>
> > def read_as_dictionary():
> >     fil = open('myDataFile', 'r')
> >     forces = {}
> >     for region in range(25):
> >         forces[region] = {}
>
> >     for step in range(20000):
> >         for region in range(25):
> >             line = fil.next(); spl = line.split()
> >             forces[region] [step] = spl
>
> > def read_as_list():
> >     fil = open('myDataFile.txt', 'r')
> >     forces = []
> >     for region in range(25):
> >         forces.append([])
>
> >     for step in range(20000):
> >         for region in range(25):
> >             line = fil.next(); spl = line.split()
> >             forces[region].append(spl)
>
> > Cheers,
> > /Ben
>
> There really isn't enough information to recommend a particular
> direction. A dictionary doesn't seem appropriate for
> this information though. Also, you are hard coding the step range to
> 20000. Is that the number of lines in the file? That isn't really a
> safe way to do it.
>
> # this is just bad style in python:
> line = fil.next(); spl = line.split()
> # better written
> spl = fil.next().split()
>
> I would just do it this way:
>
> def read_as_list(data, regions=25, maxlines=20000):
>     # If data is a filename, open the file. If it is a file
>     # object or any sequence of 'lines' it should just work.
>
>     file_opened = False
>     if isinstance(data, basestring):
>         data = open(data, 'r')
>         file_opened = True
>
>     forces = [[] for _ in xrange(regions)]
>     try:
>         for i, line in data:
>             if i == maxlines:
>                 break
>             forces[i % 25].append(line.split())
>     finally:
>         if file_opened:
>             f.close()
>     return forces
>
> Matt