Head First Programming

Chapter 4. Data in Files and Arrays: Sort it out

As your programs develop, so do your data handling needs.

And when you have lots of data to work with, using an individual variable for each piece of data gets really old, really quickly. So programmers employ some rather awesome containers (known as data structures) to help them work with lots of data. More times than not, all that data comes from a file stored on a hard disk. So, how can you work with data in your files? Turns out it’s a breeze. Flip the page and let’s learn how!

Surf’s up in Codeville

The annual Codeville Surf-A-Thon is more popular than ever this year.

Because there are so many contestants, the organizers asked you to write a Python program to process the scores. Eager to please, you agreed.

The trouble is, even though the contest is over and the beach is now clear, you can’t hit the waves until the program is written. Your program has to work out the highest surfing scores. Despite your urge to surf, a promise is a promise, so writing the program has to come first.

Find the highest score in the results file

After the judges rate the competitors, the scores are stored in a file called results.txt. There is one line in the file for each competitor’s score. You need to write a program that reads through each of these lines, ...