Paul Rubin wrote: > Erik Max Francis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > >> This is really wasteful, as there's no point in reading in the whole >> file before iterating over it. To get the same effect as file >> iteration in later versions, use the .xreadlines method:: >> >> for line in aFile.xreadlines(): >> ... >> > > Ehhh, a heck of a lot of web pages don't have any newlines, so you end > up getting the whole file anyway, with that method. Something like > > for line in iter(lambda: aFile.read(4096), ''): ... > > may be best. > Certainly there's are cases where xreadlines or read(bytecount) are reasonable, but only if the total pages size is *very* large. But for most web pages, you guys are just nit-picking (or showing off) to suggest that the full read implemented by readlines is wasteful. Moreover, the original problem was with sockets -- which don't have xreadlines. That seems to be a method on regular file objects.
For simplicity, I'd still suggest my original use of readlines. If and when you find you are downloading web pages with sizes that are putting a serious strain on your memory footprint, then one of the other suggestions might be indicated. Gary Herron -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
