On 14/05/07, Alan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I'm looking for a more elegant way to parse sections of text files that
> are bordered by BEGIN/END delimiting phrases, like this:
>
> some text
> some more text
> BEGIN_INTERESTING_BIT
> someline1
> someline2
> someline3
> END_INTERESTING_BIT
> more text
> more text
If the structure is pretty simple, you could use a state machine approach. eg:
import sys
infile = open(sys.argv[1], 'r')
INTERESTING, BORING = 'interesting', 'boring'
interestingLines = []
for line in infile:
if line == 'BEGIN_INTERESTING_BIT':
state = INTERESTING
elif line == 'END_INTERESTING_BIT':
state = BORING
elif state == INTERESTING:
interestingLines.append(line)
return interestingLines
If you want to put each group of interesting lines into its own
section, you could do a bit of extra work (append a new empty list to
interestingLines on 'BEGIN', then append to the list at position -1 on
state==INTERESTING).
HTH!
--
John.
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