Tim, > I'm not sure if it's more efficient, but there's the struct module: > http://docs.python.org/library/struct.html
Thanks for your suggestion. I've been experimenting with this technique, but my initial tests don't show any performance improvements over using slice() objects to slice a string. However, I missed the nuance of using 'x' to mark filler bytes - I'm going to see if this makes a difference (it may as I am skipping over several columns of input that I've been currently returning as ignored values) <reading your link to doc ...> wait ... it looks like I can 'compile' struct strings using by using a Struct class vs. the using the module's basic unpack() function. This sounds like the difference between using compiled regular expressions vs. re-compiling a regular expression on every use. I'll see if this makes a difference and report back to the list. Regards, Malcolm -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
