From: Colin Bartlett <colinb2r@...>
Date: 2010-07-26T06:30:19+09:00
Subject: Re: re-organize original text data then write in files

--000e0cd7204256517e048c3cf992
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 11:24 AM, Junhui Liao <junhui.liao@uclouvain.be>wrote:

> ...
> Already, I developed a script in C++, but it cost around 3 hours to deal
> with this job.
> And I am totally new guy to ruby, perl, a little on Python.
> So, my question is,
>
> 1, how many time it will be cost to do this job under ruby?
> If the time less than one and a half hours, then it worth to study for
>  me. I was attracted by the beautiful ruby, already : ) .


I'm neither a Ruby expert nor an expert programmer, but I have been using
Ruby (for my own purposes) for over 8 years, and as a thought exercise I
tried this (not actually running anything), and it took me about 20 to 30
minutes, *provided* the computer memory is big enough to hold all the data.
(I couldn't think of an easy way to what I think you want to do without
reading in all the data first, modifying it, then writing it out. That, or
open 4096 files at the same time: neither way seems elegant.)

And if you can do that in C++ then I'm sure you can probably do it in Ruby,
Perl, Python, etc, etc. If you can program in C++ then I see no reason why
you wouldn't be able to program in Ruby, Perl, Python, etc. (It might look
like C++ rewritten in R, P, P, etc, but so what if you're trying things
out.)

Personally, if I didn't have much time, and I wanted to try something out in
another computer language, I'd go with a language that I knew a little
about, so in my case that would be Ruby, Pascal, Qbasic (!!!), and - in your
case - maybe try something quick in Python. (But I'd also encourage you to
look at Ruby sometime and try it.)

Maybe it partly depends on what standard methods/functions are available:
for example, in Ruby you can read a line from a file into a String, and then
use a builtin method on the String to split it into an array of values using
a specified delimiter, so in your case a space character? But I'd be very
surprised if there weren't similar builtins in Perl and Python.

--000e0cd7204256517e048c3cf992--