| Re: Determining length of a text file? [message #40952 is a reply to message #40889] |
Tue, 21 September 2004 08:18   |
Craig Markwardt
Messages: 1869
Registered: November 1996
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Senior Member |
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lloyd@evilprofessor.co.uk (Lloyd Watkin) writes:
> [...]
>> It is usually more time efficient to allocate a big text array, read,
>> ignore the error, and truncate the empty text strings thus avoiding a
>> FOR loop. Since all null strings point to the same (null) memory (I
>> think) you only use a small temporary memory. For large table this can
>> improve speed a lot.
>
> I have a file of a few million lines to read in. Obviously it takes
> awhile to read in (using while EOF), and would like to speed it up.
>
> How do I get the code to ignore the error generated?
You can trap errors using ON_IOERROR.
Another way you might approach this is to read the data in as
*bytes*. For example, a 256 kB array like this, and read it
unformatted,
bb = bytarr(256L*1024L)
; ...
bb(*) = 0
readu, unit, bb
You will still need to trap the I/O error which will probably come on
the last read, since your file will probably not be a multiple of
256k. Initializing BB to zero is important since if you only get a
partial read, then the previous contents will remain.
Then just search for the line-ending character of choice, usually
either ascii 13 or 10,
wh = where(bb EQ 13, ct)
; or
wh = where(bb EQ 10, ct)
total = total + ct
Roll that into a loop, and you probably can't get faster than that
from within IDL. Since you are reading a large amount of data at
once, 256k, the overhead for looping is very low.
Craig
--
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Craig B. Markwardt, Ph.D. EMAIL: craigmnet@REMOVEcow.physics.wisc.edu
Astrophysics, IDL, Finance, Derivatives | Remove "net" for better response
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