Skip to Content
Practical Programming, 2nd Edition
book

Practical Programming, 2nd Edition

by Paul Gries, Jennifer Campbell, Jason Montojo
September 2013
Intermediate to advanced
350 pages
9h 38m
English
Pragmatic Bookshelf
Content preview from Practical Programming, 2nd Edition

Writing Algorithms That Use the File-Reading Techniques

There are several common ways to organize information in files. The rest of this chapter will show how to apply the various file-reading techniques to these situations and how to develop some algorithms to help with this.

Skipping the Header

Many data files begin with a header. As described in The Readline Technique, TSDL files begin with a one-line description followed by comments in lines beginning with a #, and the Readline technique can be used to skip that header. The technique ends when we read the first real piece of data, which will be the first line after the description that doesn’t start with a #.

In English, we might try this algorithm to process this kind of a file:

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Practical Programming, 3rd Edition

Practical Programming, 3rd Edition

Jennifer Campbell, Jason Montojo, Paul Gries
Programming Rust, 2nd Edition

Programming Rust, 2nd Edition

Jim Blandy, Jason Orendorff, Leonora F. S. Tindall

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781941222485Errata Page