Member Avatar for Nivek90

I have a file that contains flow statistics from a switch. This is a big file with alot of values I would like to print out the statistics based on user input.
I'm having a hard time to figure out which way is the most efficient, using a dictionary or a list. I'm looking for a way to split my keys and values

element ={"cookie": " ","duration": " ","table": " ","n_packets": " ","n_bytes": " ",
"idle_timeout": " ","idle_age": " ","priority": " ","arp": " ","in_port": " ","vlan_tci": " ","dl_src": " ","dl_dst": " ","arp_spat": " ",",arp_tpa": " ",",arp_op": " ",",actions": " ",}

c=[] #cookie list
dur =[] #duration list

with open("flow.txt") as f: #opening file
  for line in f: #loop the file
    line.split("=")
    print(line)
    if "cookie" in line: #if this cookie exsist in file append its value into c

      print
    if "duration" in line: #if this duration exsist in file append its value into c

      print
NXST_FLOW reply (xid=0x4):
cookie=0x0, duration=15.42s, table=0, n_packets=1, n_bytes=42, idle_timeout=60, idle_age=15, priority=65535,arp,in_port=2,vlan_tci=0x0000,  dl_src=b6:51:61:a6:5b:9c,dl_dst=6a:fd:ae:4b:94:72,arp_spa=10.0.0.3,arp_tpa=10.0.0.1,arp_op=1 actions=output:1
cookie=0x0, duration=15.419s, table=0, n_packets=1, n_bytes=42, idle_timeout=60, idle_age=15, priority=65535,arp,in_port=1,vlan_tci=0x0000,dl_src=6a:fd:ae:4b:94:72,dl_dst=b6:51:61:a6:5b:9c,arp_spa=10.0.0.1,arp_tpa=10.0.0.3,arp_op=2 actions=output:2
cookie=0x0, duration=20.437s, table=0, n_packets=1, n_bytes=42, idle_timeout=60, idle_age=20, priority=65535,arp,in_port=2,vlan_tci=0x0000,dl_src=b6:51:61:a6:5b:9c,dl_dst=6a:fd:ae:4b:94:72,arp_spa=10.0.0.3,arp_tpa=10.0.0.1,arp_op=2 actions=output:1
cookie=0x0, duration=20.427s, table=0, n_packets=1, n_bytes=66, idle_timeout=60, idle_age=20, priority=65535,tcp,in_port=1,vlan_tci=0x0000,dl_src=6a:fd:ae:4b:94:72,dl_dst=b6:51:61:a6:5b:9c,nw_src=10.0.0.1,nw_dst=10.0.0.3,nw_tos=0,tp_src=51404,tp_dst=5001 actions=output:2
cookie=0x0, duration=20.425s, table=0, n_packets=256488, n_bytes=16928228, idle_timeout=60, idle_age=15, priority=65535,tcp,in_port=2,vlan_tci=0x0000,dl_src=b6:51:61:a6:5b:9c,dl_dst=6a:fd:ae:4b:94:72,nw_src=10.0.0.3,nw_dst=10.0.0.1,nw_tos=0,tp_src=5001,tp_dst=51406 actions=output:1
cookie=0x0, duration=20.426s, table=0, n_packets=473316, n_bytes=23749111808, idle_timeout=60, idle_age=15, priority=65535,tcp,in_port=1,vlan_tci=0x0000,dl_src=6a:fd:ae:4b:94:72,dl_dst=b6:51:61:a6:5b:9c,nw_src=10.0.0.1,nw_dst=10.0.0.3,nw_tos=0,tp_src=51406,tp_dst=5001 actions=output:2
cookie=0x0, duration=20.436s, table=0, n_packets=3, n_bytes=206, idle_timeout=60, idle_age=20, priority=65535,tcp,in_port=2,vlan_tci=0x0000,dl_src=b6:51:61:a6:5b:9c,dl_dst=6a:fd:ae:4b:94:72,nw_src=10.0.0.3,nw_dst=10.0.0.1,nw_tos=0,tp_src=5001,tp_dst=51404 actions=output:1
Edited by Nivek90
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  • Latest Post Latest Post by Peleg
Member Avatar for rproffitt

Your question appears to be: "most efficient, using a dictionary or a list." To answer that you would have to try both and benchmark the results. I hate to write this but here if the report doesn't take more than a minute we rarely rewrite it.

Member Avatar for Peleg

It seems to me you need to scan the input file, line-by-line, looking for (name, value) pairs. The file is very regular. To find the value for any named item, I'd just use Regular Expressions to scan for something that looks like: "value=", e.g. "cookie=" or "duration=". From the character just after the "=", just extract everything up to next comma or end-of-line and that is the corresponding value. The Regular Expression can hand you the item name without the equals-sign and the value without the trailing comma.

Regular Expressions (RegEx's) are explicitly designed to scan a string and pick out patterns in the string. The patterns can be quite complex; I've seen a RegEx that can verify if an email address is syntactically correct according to the formal standard. Your situation is a very simple one.

Edited by Peleg
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