Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!ginosko!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!aiai!ken
From: ken@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Ken Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: Algorithm for average time of day?
Message-ID: <876@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 13 Sep 89 10:51:10 GMT
References: <1780003@hpcc01.HP.COM> <898@dutrun.UUCP> <8Z2az8G00WB8M1AUcT@andrew.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: ken@aiai.UUCP (Ken Johnson)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 23

In article <8Z2az8G00WB8M1AUcT@andrew.cmu.edu> dl2p+@andrew.cmu.edu (Douglas Allen Luce) writes:
>I'm trying to read the contents of a text file into memory and have a single
>pointer to it.  I quickly figured up a couple of different ways to do this:
> 
>First count all the characters in the text file, then allocate enough memory
>to hold it, then go back and read in the file.  I figured this would be a bit
>slower than:

Here is an alternative.  I can't spell it out in great detail because I
don't know which operating system you are using.  However, both MS/DOS
and UNIX allow you to find the length of a file from information about
it held in the disk directory.  Read that information, then create a
buffer of the right size and then read the disk into it. 

Good luck,
-- Ken


-- 
Ken Johnson, AI Applications Institute, 80 South Bridge, Edinburgh EH1 1HN
E-mail ken@aiai.ed.ac.uk, phone 031-225 4464 extension 212
`I have read your article, Mr.  Johnson, and I am no wiser than when I
started.' -- `Possibly not, sir, but far better informed.'