Wow, if I'm going to get replies (with implemented solutions!) this quickly, I'll post here more often :-)
This is the most different to my solution, and also the shortest, and therefore the most interesting, reply so far. Its also the last one I'll reply to before I go to bed. zzzz.... Its taken me a while to get a rough understanding of this code, but I think I have some idea. Correct me if I'm wrong. groupby groups based on value of line(record) Record returns 1 for the first line, 1 of the second, 1 for the 3rd, then 2 for the 4th because seq[0] gets incremented since len(line) > 20 OK thats fair enough. But how does record retain state between calls? How is that related to the fact your storing your value as a singleton list, instead just an int? It seems a little confusing to be honest, probably mainly due to my unfamiliarity with groupby. Retaining state between method calls is part of what interests me so much about the Generator/ Acceptor case. Here youre retaining state between calls with none of the special syntax used for example in Generators. How? Is it a side effect of the way groupby uses record? If so, then thats a littleoblique and unreadable for my liking. Is the state the record returns passed back to it somehow? I take it gets passed a value for seq at some point, seeing as how you've bothered to define it as a default argument rather than just seq = [0] on the first line. That works, but at the cost of having to return and pass all of state every call. I imagine other solutions (Generator/Acceptor based etc) would be substanitally more efficient. And again more readable, to a Python beginner such as myself at least. Still, this is fascinating.... going to have to spend some time experimenting with groupby as soon as I get a chance.... -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
