reading in ints from binary files

[Chris Liechti]

"Bill" <metaliu at yahoo.com> wrote in news:a7ns1d$mi1$1
@nntp1.jpl.nasa.gov:
> Quick Newb question:
> 
> How do I read in integers from binary files?  readlines() reads 
returns
> the data in as a string.  I can manipulate the string to get the
> desired result. However, is there an easier way of doing this?  I
> currently do something like:
> 
> f=open('file', 'rb')
> s = f.readline()
> l = list(s[0:-1])
> l.reverse()
> a = array.array('h', ''.join(l))
> 
> There's gotta be an easier way.

i usualy use the struct module.

a = struct.unpack("<HHHHH", f.read(10))

don't use "readline" on binary files as it will only read to a 0x1a 
wich can occour randomly in binary data. with "read(size)" with size 
appropriate for your fileformat (e.g. one record at a time)

chris

-- 
Chris <cliechti at gmx.net>