Re: sorting tuples...

2005-10-03 Thread nidhog

Steve Holden wrote:
 Dan Sommers wrote:
  On 27 Sep 2005 19:01:38 -0700,
  [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
 
 with the binary stuff out of the way, what i have is this string data:
 
 
 20050922 # date line
 mike
 mike's message...
 20040825 # date line
 jeremy
 jeremy's message...
 ...
 
 
 what i want to do is to use the date line as the first data in a tuple
 and the succeeding lines goes into the tuple, like:
 
 
 (20050922, mike, mike's message)
 
 
 then when it matches another date line it makes another new tuple with
 that date line as the header data and the succeeding data, etc..
 
 
 (20050922, mike, mike's message)
 (20040825, jeremy, jeremy's message)
 ...
 
 
 then i would sort the tuples according to the date.
 
 
 is there an easier/proper way of doing this without generating alot of
 tuples?
 
 
  You want a dictionary.  Python dictionaries map keys to values (in other
  languages, these data structures are known as hashes, maps, or
  associative arrays).  The keys will be the dates; the values will depend
  on whether or not you have multiple messages for one date.
 
  If the dates are unique (which, looking at your data, is probably not
  true), then each item in the dictionary can be just one (who, message)
  tuple.
 
  If the dates are not unique, then you'll have to manage each item of the
  dictionary as a list of (who, message) tuples.
 
  And before you ask:  no, dictionaries are *not* sorted; you'll have to
  sort a separate list of the keys or the items at the appropriate time.
 
 I'm not sure this advice is entirely helpful, since it introduces
 complexities not really required by the simplistic tuple notation the OP
 seems to be struggling for.

 Following the old adage First, make it work; then (if it doesn't work
 fast enough) make it faster), and making the *dangerous* assumption
 that each message genuinely is exactly three lines, we might write:

 msglist = []
 f = open(theDataFile.txt, r)
 for date in f:
who = f.next() # pulls a line from the file
msg = f.next() # pulls a line from the file
msglist,append((date, who, msg))
 # now have list of messages as tuples
 msglist.sort()

 After this, msglist should be  date-sorted list of messages. Though who
 knows what needs to happen to them next ...

just to spit it all out to stdout in a nice formatted form so I can
save it to a file.

I'm still confused though, but I'm working on it. struct is nice.


 regards
   Steve
 --
 Steve Holden   +44 150 684 7255  +1 800 494 3119
 Holden Web LLC www.holdenweb.com
 PyCon TX 2006  www.pycon.org

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Re: sorting tuples...

2005-09-28 Thread Steve Holden
Dan Sommers wrote:
 On 27 Sep 2005 19:01:38 -0700,
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
 
with the binary stuff out of the way, what i have is this string data:
 
 
20050922 # date line
mike
mike's message...
20040825 # date line
jeremy
jeremy's message...
...
 
 
what i want to do is to use the date line as the first data in a tuple
and the succeeding lines goes into the tuple, like:
 
 
(20050922, mike, mike's message)
 
 
then when it matches another date line it makes another new tuple with
that date line as the header data and the succeeding data, etc..
 
 
(20050922, mike, mike's message)
(20040825, jeremy, jeremy's message)
...
 
 
then i would sort the tuples according to the date.
 
 
is there an easier/proper way of doing this without generating alot of
tuples?
 
 
 You want a dictionary.  Python dictionaries map keys to values (in other
 languages, these data structures are known as hashes, maps, or
 associative arrays).  The keys will be the dates; the values will depend
 on whether or not you have multiple messages for one date.
 
 If the dates are unique (which, looking at your data, is probably not
 true), then each item in the dictionary can be just one (who, message)
 tuple.
 
 If the dates are not unique, then you'll have to manage each item of the
 dictionary as a list of (who, message) tuples.
 
 And before you ask:  no, dictionaries are *not* sorted; you'll have to
 sort a separate list of the keys or the items at the appropriate time.
 
I'm not sure this advice is entirely helpful, since it introduces 
complexities not really required by the simplistic tuple notation the OP 
seems to be struggling for.

Following the old adage First, make it work; then (if it doesn't work 
fast enough) make it faster), and making the *dangerous* assumption 
that each message genuinely is exactly three lines, we might write:

msglist = []
f = open(theDataFile.txt, r)
for date in f:
   who = f.next() # pulls a line from the file
   msg = f.next() # pulls a line from the file
   msglist,append((date, who, msg))
# now have list of messages as tuples
msglist.sort()

After this, msglist should be  date-sorted list of messages. Though who 
knows what needs to happen to them next ...

regards
  Steve
-- 
Steve Holden   +44 150 684 7255  +1 800 494 3119
Holden Web LLC www.holdenweb.com
PyCon TX 2006  www.pycon.org

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Re: sorting tuples...

2005-09-27 Thread nidhog

Magnus Lycka wrote:

 Why? It seems you are trying to use a string as some kind of container,
 and Python has those in the box. Just use a list of tuples, rather than
 a list of strings. That will work fine for .sort(), and it's much more
 convenient to access your data. Using the typical tool for extracting
 binary data from files/strings will give you tuples by default.

my problem with tuples  lists is that i don't know how to assign data
to them properly. i'm quite new in python ;)

with the binary stuff out of the way, what i have is this string data:

20050922 # date line
mike
mike's message...
20040825 # date line
jeremy
jeremy's message...
...

what i want to do is to use the date line as the first data in a tuple
and the succeeding lines goes into the tuple, like:

(20050922, mike, mike's message)

then when it matches another date line it makes another new tuple with
that date line as the header data and the succeeding data, etc..

(20050922, mike, mike's message)
(20040825, jeremy, jeremy's message)
...

then i would sort the tuples according to the date.

is there an easier/proper way of doing this without generating alot of
tuples?

thanks! for the help :)

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Re: sorting tuples...

2005-09-27 Thread Dan Sommers
On 27 Sep 2005 19:01:38 -0700,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 with the binary stuff out of the way, what i have is this string data:

 20050922 # date line
 mike
 mike's message...
 20040825 # date line
 jeremy
 jeremy's message...
 ...

 what i want to do is to use the date line as the first data in a tuple
 and the succeeding lines goes into the tuple, like:

 (20050922, mike, mike's message)

 then when it matches another date line it makes another new tuple with
 that date line as the header data and the succeeding data, etc..

 (20050922, mike, mike's message)
 (20040825, jeremy, jeremy's message)
 ...

 then i would sort the tuples according to the date.

 is there an easier/proper way of doing this without generating alot of
 tuples?

You want a dictionary.  Python dictionaries map keys to values (in other
languages, these data structures are known as hashes, maps, or
associative arrays).  The keys will be the dates; the values will depend
on whether or not you have multiple messages for one date.

If the dates are unique (which, looking at your data, is probably not
true), then each item in the dictionary can be just one (who, message)
tuple.

If the dates are not unique, then you'll have to manage each item of the
dictionary as a list of (who, message) tuples.

And before you ask:  no, dictionaries are *not* sorted; you'll have to
sort a separate list of the keys or the items at the appropriate time.

Regards,
Dan

-- 
Dan Sommers
http://www.tombstonezero.net/dan/
-- 
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Re: sorting tuples...

2005-09-26 Thread Magnus Lycka
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 I edited my code earlier and came up with stringing the groups
 (200501202010, sender, message_string) into one string delimited by
 '%%%'.

Why? It seems you are trying to use a string as some kind of container,
and Python has those in the box. Just use a list of tuples, rather than
a list of strings. That will work fine for .sort(), and it's much more
convenient to access your data. Using the typical tool for extracting
binary data from files/strings will give you tuples by default.

  import struct # Check this out in library ref.
  # I'm inventing a simple binary format with everything
  # as strings in fixed positions. There's just one string
  # below, adjacent string literals are concatenated by
  # Python. I split it over three lines for readability.
  bin = (
200501221530John*** long string here *** 
200504151625Clyde   *** clyde's long string here *** 
200503130935Jeremy  *** jeremy string here  )
  fmt=@12s8s32s # imagined binary format.
  l=52 # 12+8+32, from previous line
  msgs = []
  for i in range(3):
... # struct.unpack will return a tuple. It works well
... # with numeric data too.
... msgs.append(struct.unpack(fmt, bin[i*l:(i+1)*l]))

  msgs.sort()
  for msg in msgs:
... print msg

('200501221530', 'John', '*** long string here ***')
('200503130935', 'Jeremy  ', '*** jeremy string here  ')
('200504151625', 'Clyde   ', *** clyde's long string here ***)

 I could then sort the messages with the date string at the beginning as
 the one being sorted with the big string in its tail being sorted
 too.

This works equally well with a list of tuples. Another benefit of
the list of tuples approach is that you don't need to cast everything
to strings. If parts of your data is e.g. numeric, just let it be an
int, a long or a float in your struct, and sorting will work correctly
without any need to format the number in such a way as to make string
sorting work exactly as numeric sorting.

Here's an example with numeric data:

  b = (
'\x00\x00\x07\xd5\x00\x00\x00\x01\x00\x00\x00\x16\x00\x00\x00'
'\x0f\x00\x00\x00\x1eJohn\x00\x00\x00\x00*** long string here'
' ***\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x07\xd5\x00\x00'
'\x00\x03\x00\x00\x00\r\x00\x00\x00\t\x00\x00\x00#Jeremy\x00'
'\x00*** jeremy string here \x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00'
'\x07\xd5\x00\x00\x00\x04\x00\x00\x00\x0f\x00\x00\x00\x10\x00'
'\x00\x00\x19Clyde\x00\x00\x00*** clyde\'s long string here ***')
  fmt=!i8s32s
  l = 60 # five ints (5*4) + 8 + 32
  bin_msgs=[]
  for i in range(3):
bin_msgs.append(struct.unpack(fmt, bin[i*l:(i+1)*l]))


  bin_msgs.reverse() # unsort...
  bin_msgs.sort()
  for msg in bin_msgs:
print msg


(2005, 1, 22, 15, 30, 'John\x00\x00\x00\x00', '*** long string here 
***\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00')
(2005, 3, 13, 9, 35, 'Jeremy\x00\x00', '*** jeremy string here 
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00')
(2005, 4, 15, 16, 25, 'Clyde\x00\x00\x00', *** clyde's long string here 
***)
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Re: sorting tuples...

2005-09-21 Thread nidhog

Thank you very much.

I'll look into this immediately.

I edited my code earlier and came up with stringing the groups
(200501202010, sender, message_string) into one string delimited by
'%%%'.

I could then sort the messages with the date string at the beginning as
the one being sorted with the big string in its tail being sorted
too.

200501202010%%%sender%%%message_string
200502160821%%%sender%%%message_string
...

After sorting this list of long strings, I could then split them up
using the '%%%' delimiter and arrange them properly for output.

It's crude but at least I achieve what I wanted done.

But both posters gave good advices, if not a bit too advanced for me.
I'll play with them and keep tweaking my code.

Thanks so much!

--
/nh

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Re: sorting tuples...

2005-09-17 Thread bearophileHUGS
Uhm, if the file is clean you can use something like this:

data = \
200501221530
John
*** long string here ***

200504151625
Clyde
*** clyde's long string here ***

200503130935
Jeremy
*** jeremy string here 

records = [rec.split(\n) for rec in data.split(\n\n)]
records.sort()
print records

If it's not clean, you have to put some more cheeks/cleanings.

Bye,
bearophile

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Re: sorting tuples...

2005-09-17 Thread Bengt Richter
On 17 Sep 2005 06:41:08 -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Hello guys,

I made a script that extracts strings from a binary file. It works.

My next problem is sorting those strings.

Output is like:

 snip 
200501221530
John
*** long string here ***

200504151625
Clyde
*** clyde's long string here ***

200503130935
Jeremy
*** jeremy string here 
 snip 

How can I go about sorting this list based on the date string that
marks the start of each message?

Should I be using lists, dictionaries or tuples?

What should I look into?

Is there a way to generate variables in a loop? Like:

x=0
while (x10):
# assign variable-x = [...list...]
x = x+1

Thanks.

Assuming your groups of strings are all non-blank lines delimited by blank 
lines,
and using StringIO as a line iterable playing the role of your source of lines,
(not tested beyond what you see ;-)

  from StringIO import StringIO
  lines = StringIO(\
 ... 200501221530
 ... John
 ... *** long string here ***
 ...
 ... 200504151625
 ... Clyde
 ... *** clyde's long string here ***
 ...
 ... 200503130935
 ... Jeremy
 ... *** jeremy string here 
 ... )
 
  from itertools import groupby
  for t in sorted(tuple(g) for k, g in groupby(lines,
 ... lambda line:line.strip()!='') if k):
 ... print t
 ...
 ('200501221530\n', 'John\n', '*** long string here ***\n')
 ('200503130935\n', 'Jeremy\n', '*** jeremy string here \n')
 ('200504151625\n', 'Clyde\n', *** clyde's long string here ***\n)

The lambda computes a grouping key that groupby uses to collect group members
as long as the value doesn't change, so this groups non-blank vs blank lines,
and the if k throws out the blank-line groups.

Obviously you could do something else with the sorted line tuples t, e.g.,

  lines.seek(0)
(just needed that to rewind the StringIO data here)

  for t in sorted(tuple(g) for k, g in groupby(lines,
 ... lambda line:line.strip()!='') if k):
 ... width = max(map(lambda x:len(x.rstrip()), t))
 ... topbot = '+-%s-+'%('-'*width)
 ... print topbot
 ... for line in t: print '| %s |' % line.rstrip().ljust(width)
 ... print topbot
 ... print
 ...
 +--+
 | 200501221530 |
 | John |
 | *** long string here *** |
 +--+ 

 +-+
 | 200503130935|
 | Jeremy  |
 | *** jeremy string here  |
 +-+

 +--+
 | 200504151625 |
 | Clyde|
 | *** clyde's long string here *** |
 +--+

Or of course you can just print the sorted groups bare:

  lines.seek(0)
  for t in sorted(tuple(g) for k, g in groupby(lines,
 ... lambda line:line.strip()!='') if k):
 ... print ''.join(t)
 ...
 200501221530
 John
 *** long string here ***

 200503130935
 Jeremy
 *** jeremy string here 

 200504151625
 Clyde
 *** clyde's long string here ***

 

If your source of line groups is not delimited by blank lines,
or has other non-blank lines, you will have to change the source
or change the lambda to some other key function that produces one
value for the lines to include (True if you want to use if k as above)
and another (False) for the ones to exclude.

HTH

Regards,
Bengt Richter
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