README.rst

Random Access File Reader

This is a small library that allows for reading any given line in a file without having to read all the lines before it or load the entire file into memory. Only the line indexes and lengths are held in memory, which enables random access even on very large files for a very minuscule memory cost.

Installation

pip install random-access-file-reader

Usage

Usage is very straightforward, and standard csv line endings (newline character), value delimiter (comma), and quotation character (double quote) are the defaults. These can be changed in the constructor.

The get_line() and get_line_dicts() methods return a list of rows.

Plain text file example:

from randomAccessReader import RandomAccessReader

reader = RandomAccessReader('~/myfile.txt')

# single line
line = reader.get_lines(2)[0]
print line

# multiple lines
lines = reader.get_lines(3, 3)
for l in lines:
    print l

Optional arguments in the constructor:

• endline_character - self-explanatory (default is endline character \n)
• ignore_blank_lines - if set to True, blank lines in the file will not be read or indexed (default is False)

Csv example:

from randomAccessReader import CsvRandomAccessReader
reader = CsvRandomAccessReader('~/myfile.csv')

# single line
line = reader.get_line_dicts(5)[0]
for x in line:
    print x + " = " line[x]

# multiple lines
lines = reader.get_line_dicts(6, 6)
for l in lines:
    for x in l:
        print x + " = " l[x]

Optional arguments in the constructor:

• endline_character - self-explanatory (default is endline character \n)
• ignore_blank_lines - if set to True, blank lines in the file will not be read or indexed (default is True)
• values_delimiter - character used by the csv to separate values within a line (default is ,)
• quotechar - character used by the csv to surround values that contain the value delimiting character (default is ")
• ignore_corrupt - if set to True, lines with an invalid length will return blank instead of raising an exception (default is False)