[Tutor] reading binary files

[etrade.griffiths at dsl.pipex.com]

Hi

I am trying to read data from a file that has format

item_name  num_items  item_type  items ....

eg

TIME      1  0.0
DISTANCE 10  0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 6.0 7.0 8.0 9.0
TIME      1  1.0
DISTANCE 10  1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 6.0 7.0 8.0 9.0 10.0

I can read this if the data are in ASCII format using

    in_file = open("my_file.dat","r")
    data1 = in_file.read()
    tokens = data1.split()

and then stepping through the resulting list but the data 
also appear in the same format in a binary file.  I tried 
converting the binary file to an ASCII file using

    ifile = open("my_file.dat","rb")
    ofile = open("new_file.dat","w")
    base64.decode(ifile, ofile)

but that gave the error "Error: Incorrect padding".  I imagine
that there is a straightforward way of doing this but haven't
found it so far.  Would be grateful for any suggestions!

Thanks

Alun Griffiths








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