Ignoring comments - Parsing input file

[Erik Max Francis]

Simon Faulkner wrote:

> I am writing a script which reads it's input from a text file
> 
> What is the easiest way to make it ignore lines that start with # or
> blank lines?

Something like:

	while 1:
	    line = input.readline()
	    if not line:
	        break
	    if line[-1] == '\n':
	        line = line[:-1] # strip newline
	    if line.find('#') >= 0):
	        line = line.split('#', 1)[0] # remove everything
	    if not line:
	        continue # skip blank lines

If your lines are insensitive to whitespace, a line = line.strip() would
be in order there too.

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