Newbie DATA STRUCTURES Question.

[gbp]

Thanks to everyone who replied.  After using Python for a week I'm a lot
more comfortable with it.  

After a couple days I figued out how to make a list of objects.  

I got a little hung up on thinking in Perl terms.  Once I stepped back
and let python be a different langauge stuff made more sense.  In Perl
you can't really make a list of records you have to make a list of
pointers to records.  In Python it seems you can make a list of anything
you want.  

Huaiyu Zhu wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 29 Jul 2000 02:57:03 GMT, gbp <gpepice1 at nycap.rr.com> wrote:
> >
> >I have experience with Perl but non with Python.
> >
> >I need to write a script to read a large text file into a structured
> >format.
> >
> >In Perl one can create a list of records using something like pointers.
> >So really you have a list of pointers-- each one pointing to an
> >anonymous record.  Each record is some data from a line in the file.
> >
> 
> Others have given more general answers, but I think you might have this
> specific question in mind: you have a file of form
> 
> 11 12 13
> 21 22 23
> ...
> 
> and you want to get a list of dictionaries (ie an array of hashes in Perl)
> 
> result = [{'a':11, 'b':12, 'c':13},
>           {'a':21, 'b':22, 'c':23},
>           ...
>           ]
> 
> You can do it as the following (not tested)
> 
> file = open(filename)  # or file = sys.stdin
> names = ['a','b','c']
> result = []
> for line in file.readlines():
>    fields = string.split(line)  # or use re to extract the fields
>    record = {}
>    for name, field in map(None, names, fields):
>        record[name] = field
>    result.append(record)
> 
> Hope this helps.
> 
> Huaiyu