Re: [Caml-list] best and fastest way to read lines from a file?

["Olivier Andrieu" <oandrieu@gmail.com>]

On 10/2/07, kirillkh <kirillkh@gmail.com> wrote:
> OK, so I'll give up the parsing/buffering part and only leave efficient
> exception handling. This should leave the user free to do anything with it,
> but prevent performance pitfalls. The following is based on Mattias
> Engdegard's code:
>
> (* I couldn't figure out, how to declare a polymorphic exception properly *)
> exception Done of 'a
>
>  let fold_file (file: in_channel)
>               (read_func: in_channel->'a)
>               (elem_func: 'a->'b->'b)
>               (seed: 'b) =
>   let rec loop prev_val =
>     let input =
>       try read_func file
>       with End_of_file -> raise (Done prev_val)
>     in
>       let combined_val = elem_func input prev_val in
>       loop combined_val
>   in
>     try loop seed with Done x -> x
>
> And the usage for line counting:
>
> let line_count filename =
>    let f = open_in filename in
>    let counter _ count = count + 1 in
>    fold_file f readline counter 0
>
> Since it's library code, we can tolerate the little annoyance of the second
> try-catch. As far as I can tell, this code has the same performance
> characteristics as yours: no consing + tail recursion. Any other problems
> with it?

well apart from the fact that you cannot have "polymorphic exceptions"
in OCaml, this kind of code is IMHO much more natural with an
imperative loop instead of a functional one:


let fold_file read chan f init =
  let acc = ref init in
  begin
    try while true do
      let d = read chan in
      acc := f d !acc
    done
    with End_of_file -> ()
  end ;
  !acc

-- 
  Olivier