[portland] Reformatting Data Files

[Rich Shepard]

On Fri, 28 Jan 2011, Kyle Jones wrote:

> It isn't anything pretty, but I think this might be similar:
> http://paste.pocoo.org/show/328545/

Kyle,

   This has worked flawlessly for some of the exported spreadsheet pages.
Now, however, I have some pages that include the units for the measured
parameters (e.g., mg/L) which is the third-to-last column in the postgres
table.

   Since I've not used python for more than a year (and I _must_ quickly
become fluent once again), my inability to get a working change embarrasses
me and I must ask the group for help.

   The original lines are:

     # Write the location, the date for this column, the parameter name
     # (which is the first column in this row), and the value.
     if row[i] != '':
       float(row[i])
       outdata.writerow([location, sampdate[i], row[0], float(row[i])])
     else:
       row[i] = ''
       outdata.writerow([location, sampdate[i], row[0]])

When the last column (item in the row list) is the unit the value is a
string, not numeric so the float() function fails. My feeble attempts to
exclude that last item from conversion have failed miserably, including:

     # Write the location, the date for this column, the parameter name
     # (which is the first column in this row), and the value.
     if row[i] != '':
       # if last column is the units name, don't convert.
       for i in range(row[] - 1)
         float(row[i])
         outdata.writerow([location, sampdate[i], row[0], float(row[i])])
     else:
       row[i] = ''
       outdata.writerow([location, sampdate[i], row[0]])

   I've tried splitting (using row[:-1]) and other expressions, but none are
correct. Please turn me in the right direction.

TIA,

Rich