In Class: Week 8, list algorithms

Create a week08 subdirectory in your cs21/class directory and copy over my starting point files:

    $ cd 
    $ cd cs21/class
    $ pwd
      /home/your_user_name/cs21/class

    $ mkdir week08        
    $ cd week08
    $ pwd
      /home/your_user_name/cs21/class/week08
    $ cp ~turnbull/public/cs21/week08/* .
    $ ls
		  fileTest.py  foo.txt  listAlgs.py
	

1. File I/O:

   open filetest.py in vim. We will look at this code together and try running it to see if we understand what it is doing.

   Rules for using a file:

   1. open a file (open returns a new file object associated with the open file). It takes the file name and the mode in which to open the file as parameters.

      	infile = open("foo.txt", "r")
      	 

   2. call method functions on the file object to read or write characters from a file.

      	line = infile.readline()
      	 

   3. close the file.

      	 infile.close()
      	 

   You can run help(file) in the python interpreter to see the method functions associated with a file object. We will likely only use readline and readlines to read in data from a file.

2. Searching for Information

   After taking a look at what list_algs.py does, we are going to add some code to list_algs.py.

   1. First, we are going to add a function to find an element in a list of integer values.

   2. Next, we are going to think about a better way to implement this function.