Question about file objects...

[J]

On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 09:27, nn <pruebauno at latinmail.com> wrote:
>> Is there a way to read the file, one item at a time, delimited by
>> commas WITHOUT having to read all 16,000 items from that one line,
>> then split them out into a list or dictionary??

> File iteration is a convenience since it is the most common case. If
> everything is on one line, you will have to handle record separators
> manually by using the .read(<number_of_bytes>) method on the file
> object and searching for the comma. If everything fits in memory the
> straightforward way would be to read the whole file with .read() and
> use .split(",") on the returned string. That should give you a nice
> list of everything.

Agreed. The confusion came because the guy teaching said that
iterating the file is delimited by a carriage return character...
which to me sounds like it's an arbitrary thing that can be changed...

I was already thinking that I'd have to read it in small chunks and
search for the delimiter i want...  and reading the whole file into a
string and then splitting that would would be nice, until the file is
so large that it starts taking up significant amounts of memory.

Anyway, thanks both of you for the explanations... I appreciate the help!

Cheers
Jeff



-- 

Charles de Gaulle  - "The better I get to know men, the more I find
myself loving dogs." -
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/c/charles_de_gaulle.html