An Odd Little Script

[M.E.Farmer]

Greg Lindstrom wrote:
> Hello-
>
> I have a task which -- dare I say -- would be easy in
<asbestos_undies>
> Perl </asbestos_undies> but would rather do in Python (our primary
> language at Novasys).  I have a file with varying length records.
All
> but the first record, that is; it's always 107 bytes long.  What I
would
> like to do is strip out all linefeeds from the file, read the
character
> in position 107 (the end of segment delimiter) and then replace all
of
> the end of segment characters with linefeeds, making a file where
each
> segment is on its own line.  Currently, some vendors supply files
with
> linefeeds, others don't, and some split the file every 80 bytes.  In
> Perl I would operate on the file in place and be on my way.  The
files
> can be quite large, so I'd rather not be making extra copies unless
it's
> absolutely essential/required.
>
> I turn to the collective wisdom/trickery of the list to point me in
the
> right direction.  How can I perform the above task while keeping my
sanity?
>
> Thanks!
> --greg
> --
> Greg Lindstrom               501 975.4859
> Computer Programmer          greg.lindstrom at novasyshealth.com
> NovaSys Health
> Little Rock, Arkansas
>
> "We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams."  W.W.

This should be fairly simple, but maybe not ;)
# get the end of segment character
# this is not optimal but should be a start
f = open('yourrecord', 'r')
eos  = f.seek(107).read(1)
r = f.read()
f.close()
r = r.replace('\r', '')
r = r.replace('\n', '')
r = r.replace(eos, '\n')
f = open('yourrecord', 'w')
f.write(r)
f.close()

hth,
M.E.Farmer