> Alan, you missed the last part of the code - he writes the rest of > the data following the match into the file.
I didn't miss it but I did misread it! :-) > file.write(contents[pos + len(name):]) I assumed 'name' was here referring to the actual value inserted. But of course that would have been a different bug to the one I described. > This is an innovative approach which may have some benefit over the > usual / read the whole file / change the data in memory / write the > whole file / method as it avoids re-writing the part of the file > before the change. Yes indeed, now that I actually see what's happening it's quite cute! > It also avoids making a new string with the modified data. True but it does involve a new string fom the slice, so I wouldn't expect a huge saving there. But the random file access should be faster than a full rewrite operation. Thanks for pointing out my mistake and my compliments to the OP! Alan G. _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor