tags:

views:

2820

answers:

3

I need to process a large file, around 400K lines and 200 M. But some time I have to process from bottom up. How can I use iterator (yield return) here? Basically I don't like to load everything in memory. I know it is more efficient to use iterator in .NET.

Thanks!

+1  A: 

To create a file iterator you can do this:

EDIT:

This is my fixed version of a fixed-width reverse file reader:

public static IEnumerable<string> readFile()
{
    using (FileStream reader = new FileStream(@"c:\test.txt",FileMode.Open,FileAccess.Read))
    {
        int i=0;
        StringBuilder lineBuffer = new StringBuilder();
        int byteRead;
        while (-i < reader.Length)
        {
            reader.Seek(--i, SeekOrigin.End);
            byteRead = reader.ReadByte();
            if (byteRead == 10 && lineBuffer.Length > 0)
            {
                yield return Reverse(lineBuffer.ToString());
                lineBuffer.Remove(0, lineBuffer.Length);
            }
            lineBuffer.Append((char)byteRead);
        }
        yield return Reverse(lineBuffer.ToString());
        reader.Close();
    }
}

public static string Reverse(string str)
{
    char[] arr = new char[str.Length];
    for (int i = 0; i < str.Length; i++)
        arr[i] = str[str.Length - 1 - i];
    return new string(arr);
}
Igor Zelaya
But that reads it forward instead of backwards. You should also use a using statement to make sure it gets closed even if an exception is thrown *or* if the iterator is disposed instead of read to the end.
Jon Skeet
Thanks for the suggestion. I will fix it
Igor Zelaya
That's now close to being correct for ISO-8859-1, but not for any other encoding. Encodings make this really tricky :(
Jon Skeet
What do you mean by "close to being correct for ISO-8859-1"? What is still missing?
Igor Zelaya
The handling isn't quite right to match "\r" "\n" and "\r\n" where the latter ends up only counting as a single line break.
Jon Skeet
It also never yields empty lines - "a\n\nb" should yield "a", "", "b"
Jon Skeet
mmmmmm...I am yielding the lineBuffer only when I find a '\n'(ASCII 10). You are right, I am not taking into accoun '\r'.
Igor Zelaya
mmmmmmm. I am also not so sure about yielding empty lines. Is that the default behavior of the StreamReader classs when calling ReadLine() Method?
Igor Zelaya
+25  A: 

Reading text files backwards is really tricky unless you're using a fixed-size encoding (e.g. ASCII). When you've got variable-size encoding (such as UTF-8) you will keep having to check whether you're in the middle of a character or not when you fetch data.

There's nothing built into the framework, and I suspect you'd have to do separate hard coding for each variable-width encoding.

EDIT: This has been somewhat tested - but that's not to say it doesn't still have some subtle bugs around. It uses StreamUtil from MiscUtil, but I've included just the necessary (new) method from there at the bottom. Oh, and it needs refactoring - there's one pretty hefty method, as you'll see:

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Text;

namespace MiscUtil.IO
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Takes an encoding (defaulting to UTF-8) and a function which produces a seekable stream
    /// (or a filename for convenience) and yields lines from the end of the stream backwards.
    /// Only single byte encodings, and UTF-8 and Unicode, are supported. The stream
    /// returned by the function must be seekable.
    /// </summary>
    public sealed class ReverseLineReader : IEnumerable<string>
    {
        /// <summary>
        /// Buffer size to use by default. Classes with internal access can specify
        /// a different buffer size - this is useful for testing.
        /// </summary>
        private const int DefaultBufferSize = 4096;

        /// <summary>
        /// Means of creating a Stream to read from.
        /// </summary>
        private readonly Func<Stream> streamSource;

        /// <summary>
        /// Encoding to use when converting bytes to text
        /// </summary>
        private readonly Encoding encoding;

        /// <summary>
        /// Size of buffer (in bytes) to read each time we read from the
        /// stream. This must be at least as big as the maximum number of
        /// bytes for a single character.
        /// </summary>
        private readonly int bufferSize;

        /// <summary>
        /// Function which, when given a position within a file and a byte, states whether
        /// or not the byte represents the start of a character.
        /// </summary>
        private Func<long,byte,bool> characterStartDetector;

        /// <summary>
        /// Creates a LineReader from a stream source. The delegate is only
        /// called when the enumerator is fetched. UTF-8 is used to decode
        /// the stream into text.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="streamSource">Data source</param>
        public ReverseLineReader(Func<Stream> streamSource)
            : this(streamSource, Encoding.UTF8)
        {
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Creates a LineReader from a filename. The file is only opened
        /// (or even checked for existence) when the enumerator is fetched.
        /// UTF8 is used to decode the file into text.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="filename">File to read from</param>
        public ReverseLineReader(string filename)
            : this(filename, Encoding.UTF8)
        {
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Creates a LineReader from a filename. The file is only opened
        /// (or even checked for existence) when the enumerator is fetched.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="filename">File to read from</param>
        /// <param name="encoding">Encoding to use to decode the file into text</param>
        public ReverseLineReader(string filename, Encoding encoding)
            : this(() => File.OpenRead(filename), encoding)
        {
        }

            /// <summary>
        /// Creates a LineReader from a stream source. The delegate is only
        /// called when the enumerator is fetched.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="streamSource">Data source</param>
        /// <param name="encoding">Encoding to use to decode the stream into text</param>
        public ReverseLineReader(Func<Stream> streamSource, Encoding encoding)
            : this(streamSource, encoding, DefaultBufferSize)
        {
        }

        internal ReverseLineReader(Func<Stream> streamSource, Encoding encoding, int bufferSize)
        {
            this.streamSource = streamSource;
            this.encoding = encoding;
            this.bufferSize = bufferSize;
            if (encoding.IsSingleByte)
            {
                // For a single byte encoding, every byte is the start (and end) of a character
                characterStartDetector = (pos, data) => true;
            }
            else if (encoding is UnicodeEncoding)
            {
                // For UTF-16, even-numbered positions are the start of a character
                characterStartDetector = (pos, data) => (pos & 1) == 0;
            }
            else if (encoding is UTF8Encoding)
            {
                // For UTF-8, bytes with the top bit clear or the second bit set are the start of a character
                // See http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html
                characterStartDetector = (pos, data) => (data & 0x80) == 0 || (data & 0x40) != 0;
            }
            else
            {
                throw new ArgumentException("Only single byte, UTF-8 and Unicode encodings are permitted");
            }
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Returns the enumerator reading strings backwards. If this method discovers that
        /// the returned stream is either unreadable or unseekable, a NotSupportedException is thrown.
        /// </summary>
        public IEnumerator<string> GetEnumerator()
        {
            Stream stream = streamSource();
            if (!stream.CanSeek)
            {
                stream.Dispose();
                throw new NotSupportedException("Unable to seek within stream");
            }
            if (!stream.CanRead)
            {
                stream.Dispose();
                throw new NotSupportedException("Unable to read within stream");
            }
            return GetEnumeratorImpl(stream);
        }

        private IEnumerator<string> GetEnumeratorImpl(Stream stream)
        {
            try
            {
                long position = stream.Length;

                if (encoding is UnicodeEncoding && (position & 1) != 0)
                {
                    throw new InvalidDataException("UTF-16 encoding provided, but stream has odd length.");
                }

                // Allow up to two bytes for data from the start of the previous
                // read which didn't quite make it as full characters
                byte[] buffer = new byte[bufferSize + 2];
                char[] charBuffer = new char[encoding.GetMaxCharCount(buffer.Length)];
                int leftOverData = 0;
                String previousEnd = null;
                // TextReader doesn't return an empty string if there's line break at the end
                // of the data. Therefore we don't return an empty string if it's our *first*
                // return.
                bool firstYield = true;

                // A line-feed at the start of the previous buffer means we need to swallow
                // the carriage-return at the end of this buffer - hence this needs declaring
                // way up here!
                bool swallowCarriageReturn = false;

                while (position > 0)
                {
                    int bytesToRead = Math.Min(position > int.MaxValue ? bufferSize : (int)position, bufferSize);

                    position -= bytesToRead;
                    stream.Position = position;
                    StreamUtil.ReadExactly(stream, buffer, bytesToRead);
                    // If we haven't read a full buffer, but we had bytes left
                    // over from before, copy them to the end of the buffer
                    if (leftOverData > 0 && bytesToRead != bufferSize)
                    {
                        // Buffer.BlockCopy doesn't document its behaviour with respect
                        // to overlapping data: we *might* just have read 7 bytes instead of
                        // 8, and have two bytes to copy...
                        Array.Copy(buffer, bufferSize, buffer, bytesToRead, leftOverData);
                    }
                    // We've now *effectively* read this much data.
                    bytesToRead += leftOverData;

                    int firstCharPosition = 0;
                    while (!characterStartDetector(position + firstCharPosition, buffer[firstCharPosition]))
                    {
                        firstCharPosition++;
                        // Bad UTF-8 sequences could trigger this. For UTF-8 we should always
                        // see a valid character start in every 3 bytes, and if this is the start of the file
                        // so we've done a short read, we should have the character start
                        // somewhere in the usable buffer.
                        if (firstCharPosition == 3 || firstCharPosition == bytesToRead)
                        {
                            throw new InvalidDataException("Invalid UTF-8 data");
                        }
                    }
                    leftOverData = firstCharPosition;

                    int charsRead = encoding.GetChars(buffer, firstCharPosition, bytesToRead - firstCharPosition, charBuffer, 0);
                    int endExclusive = charsRead;

                    for (int i = charsRead - 1; i >= 0; i--)
                    {
                        char lookingAt = charBuffer[i];
                        if (swallowCarriageReturn)
                        {
                            swallowCarriageReturn = false;
                            if (lookingAt == '\r')
                            {
                                endExclusive--;
                                continue;
                            }
                        }
                        // Anything non-line-breaking, just keep looking backwards
                        if (lookingAt != '\n' && lookingAt != '\r')
                        {
                            continue;
                        }
                        // End of CRLF? Swallow the preceding CR
                        if (lookingAt == '\n')
                        {
                            swallowCarriageReturn = true;
                        }
                        int start = i + 1;
                        string bufferContents = new string(charBuffer, start, endExclusive - start);
                        endExclusive = i;
                        string stringToYield = previousEnd == null ? bufferContents : bufferContents + previousEnd;
                        if (!firstYield || stringToYield.Length != 0)
                        {
                            yield return stringToYield;
                        }
                        firstYield = false;
                        previousEnd = null;
                    }

                    previousEnd = endExclusive == 0 ? null : (new string(charBuffer, 0, endExclusive) + previousEnd);

                    // If we didn't decode the start of the array, put it at the end for next time
                    if (leftOverData != 0)
                    {
                        Buffer.BlockCopy(buffer, 0, buffer, bufferSize, leftOverData);
                    }
                }
                if (leftOverData != 0)
                {
                    // At the start of the final buffer, we had the end of another character.
                    throw new InvalidDataException("Invalid UTF-8 data at start of stream");
                }
                if (firstYield && string.IsNullOrEmpty(previousEnd))
                {
                    yield break;
                }
                yield return previousEnd ?? "";
            }
            finally
            {
                stream.Dispose();
            }
        }

        IEnumerator IEnumerable.GetEnumerator()
        {
            return GetEnumerator();
        }
    }
}


// StreamUtil.cs:
public static class StreamUtil
{
    public static void ReadExactly(Stream input, byte[] buffer, int bytesToRead)
    {
        int index = 0;
        while (index < bytesToRead)
        {
            int read = input.Read(buffer, index, bytesToRead - index);
            if (read == 0)
            {
                throw new EndOfStreamException
                    (String.Format("End of stream reached with {0} byte{1} left to read.",
                                   bytesToRead - index,
                                   bytesToRead - index == 1 ? "s" : ""));
            }
            index += read;
        }
    }
}

Feedback very welcome. This was fun :)

Jon Skeet
That will be very helpful, Jon! Thanks a lot for your response.
Liang Wu
Righto - I'm planning to start in about an hour. I should be able to support single-byte encodings, Encoding.Unicode, and Encoding.UTF8. Other dobule-byte encodings won't be supported. I'm expecting testing to be a pain :(
Jon Skeet
Hey Jon, quick question. I did not see how to close the file. Did I miss anything here?Thanks!
Liang Wu
Eek, you're right. Aargh. Will fix.
Jon Skeet
@Jon: would my code do....http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2241012/net-is-there-a-way-to-read-a-txt-file-from-bottom-to-top/2241173#2241173
tommieb75
+1  A: 

You can read the file one character at a time backwards and cache all characters until you reach a carriage return and/or line feed.

You then reverse the collected string and yeld it as a line.

/johan/

idstam
Reading a file one character at a time backwards is hard though - because you've got to be able to recognise the start of a character. How simple that is will depend on the encoding.
Jon Skeet