Python faster way to read fixed length fields form a file into dictionary
- by Martlark
I have a file of names and addresses as follows (example line)
OSCAR ,CANNONS ,8 ,STIEGLITZ CIRCUIT
And I want to read it into a dictionary of name and value. Here self.field_list is a list of the name, length and start point of the fixed fields in the file. What ways are there to speed up this method? (python 2.6)
def line_to_dictionary(self, file_line,rec_num):
file_line = file_line.lower() # Make it all lowercase
return_rec = {} # Return record as a dictionary
for (field_start, field_length, field_name) in self.field_list:
field_data = file_line[field_start:field_start+field_length]
if (self.strip_fields == True): # Strip off white spaces first
field_data = field_data.strip()
if (field_data != ''): # Only add non-empty fields to dictionary
return_rec[field_name] = field_data
# Set hidden fields
#
return_rec['_rec_num_'] = rec_num
return_rec['_dataset_name_'] = self.name
return return_rec
