speed up linecache.getline()

[Peter Otten]

bbarbero at inescporto.pt wrote:

> I am using linecache.getline, to access to a line in a long file. It s
> really fast, appx 4seconds, but I was just wandering if any of you,
> know either another way, or there is something that I can do to speed
> it up...  thank you very much for your help!!

If it is a single file that never changes just read it into a list:

with open(filename) as f:
    cached_lines = list(f)

If that alone takes about 4 seconds the runtime of your script is spent 
reading the file from disk. An SSD might help then ;)

In some situations you could delay reading line n until that line is 
actually needed. This may speed up your script for cases where all requested 
lines are near the beginning of the cached file.

Peter