Stéfan van der Walt wrote: > 2009/5/23 Charles R Harris <[email protected]>: >> In [9]: fromfile("empty.dat", count=10)
> Instead of throwing errors in these scenarios, we could just return > the elements read and raise a warning? This is consistent with most > other file APIs I know and allows you to read blocks of data until the > data runs out. This was just discussed a week or two ago (look for messaged by me and Robert Kern) fromfile needs some attention in general, but I think Robert an I (the only two that I know were paying attention to that discussion) agreed that there should be an API that says: read up to n items from the file Robert thought that should be the default, but I think that means everyone would be forced to check how many items they got every time they read, which is too much code and likely to be forgotten and lead to errors. So I think that an exception should be raised if you ask for n and get less than n, but that there should be a flag that says something like "max_items=n", that indicates that you'll take what you get. I don't like a warning -- it's unconventional to catch those like exceptions -- if you want n items, and you haven't written code to handle less than n, you should get an exception. If you have written code to handle that, that you can use the flag. -Chris -- Christopher Barker, Ph.D. Oceanographer NOAA/OR&R/HAZMAT (206) 526-6959 voice 7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception _______________________________________________ Numpy-discussion mailing list [email protected] http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion
