On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 3:22 PM, Mark Lawrence <breamore...@yahoo.co.uk>wrote:
> The correct way is to read the interface specification which tells you > what should be in the data. Or do people not use interface specifications > these days, preferring to guess what they've got instead? > No one is suggesting guessing (OK, sometimes for what encoding text is in -- but that's when you already know it's text). But while some specs for mixed ascii and binary may specify which bytes are which, not all do -- there may be a read the file 'till you find this text, then the next n bytes are binary, or maybe the next bytes are binary until you get to this ascii text, etc... This is not guessing, but it does require working with an object which has both ascii text and binary in it -- and why shouldn't Python provide a reasonable way to work with that? -Chris -- Christopher Barker, Ph.D. Oceanographer Emergency Response Division NOAA/NOS/OR&R (206) 526-6959 voice 7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception chris.bar...@noaa.gov
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