[PD] Handling numbers read from a file

[Matteo Sisti Sette]

 > As all my data are numbers, [tabread] should work fine. Although in
 > this
 > case, I do not know how to know the number of values in advance to
 > resize the table prior to loading the data.

If you store the numbers one per line in the text file, then you have 
two options:

A) Load the file, then bang [textfile] in an [until] loop (until the end 
is reached) and resize the table at each bang by incrementing its size 
by one as you add one more number. Quite inefficient since I guess it 
may have to reallocate memory at each resize

B) Load the file, then do one first "scan" of [textfile] (banging it in 
an [until] loop) just to count the numbers, then resize the table to the 
number of counted elements, then start all over again to store the 
numbers into the table

If, on the other hand, you store all the number in one list in the text 
file, then you can load it, bang [textfile] only once, and use a [list 
length] to know the number of elements and resize the table accordingly, 
and then prepend a 0 to the list and send the whole list to the table to 
store the elements.

I think the latter solution should be a little (or significantly?) more 
efficient.

-- 
Matteo Sisti Sette
matteosistisette at gmail.com
http://www.matteosistisette.com