reading file contents to an array (newbie)

[Darren Dale]

> actually, I find the following more readable, and even faster:
> 
>     from mmap import mmap, MAP_PRIVATE, PROT_READ
>     from os import fstat
> 
>     f = file('test.dat',mode='rt')
>     fd = f.fileno()
>     m = mmap(fd, fstat(fd).st_size, MAP_PRIVATE, PROT_READ)
> 
>     data=[]
>     while True:
>         line = m.readline()
>         if not line: break
>         data.extend(map(float, line.split()))
> 
I will try this out. I am reading three sets of data from a file with 
lengthy headers, so it looks like mmap is a really good solution. Thanks 
to Jeff and Chris as well for teaching me something new.

One more thing, I am reading into arrays that can be 5000 cells wide, 
and arbitrarily long (time-resolved scientific data.) The datafiles are 
reorganized such that only 16 columns are listed on a line, and a '\' 
character indicates that the row continues on the next line of the file. 
Do you have ideas of how to quickly reconstruct these rows? I think mmap 
gets me half the way there, but should I try to avoid testing each 
readline for the presence of a '\' character?