I was reading a binary file in python like this:
from struct import unpack
ns = 1000
f = open("binary_file", 'rb')
while True:
data = f.read(ns * 4)
if data == '':
break
unpacked = unpack(">%sf" % ns, data)
print str(unpacked)
when I realized unpack(">f", str)
is for unpacking IEEE floating point, my data is IBM 32-bit float point numbers
My question is:
How can I impliment my unpack
to unpack IBM 32-bit float point type numbers?
I don't mind using like ctypes
to extend python to get better performance.
EDIT: I did some searching: http://mail.scipy.org/pipermail/scipy-user/2009-January/019392.html
This looks very promising, but I want to get more efficient: there are potential tens of thousands of loops.
EDIT: posted answer below. Thanks for the tip.
I think I understood it: first unpack the string to unsigned 4 byte integer, and then use this function:
def ibm2ieee(ibm):
"""
Converts an IBM floating point number into IEEE format.
:param: ibm - 32 bit unsigned integer: unpack('>L', f.read(4))
"""
if ibm == 0:
return 0.0
sign = ibm >> 31 & 0x01
exponent = ibm >> 24 & 0x7f
mantissa = (ibm & 0x00ffffff) / float(pow(2, 24))
return (1 - 2 * sign) * mantissa * pow(16, exponent - 64)
Thanks for all who helped!
IBM Floating Point Architecture, how to encode and decode: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Floating_Point_Architecture
My solution: I wrote a class, I think in this way, it can be a bit faster, because used Struct object, so that the unpack fmt is compiled only once. EDIT: also because it's unpacking size*bytes all at once, and unpacking can be an expensive operation.
from struct import Struct
class StructIBM32(object):
"""
see example in:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Floating_Point_Architecture#An_Example
>>> import struct
>>> c = StructIBM32(1)
>>> bit = '11000010011101101010000000000000'
>>> c.unpack(struct.pack('>L', int(bit, 2)))
[-118.625]
"""
def __init__(self, size):
self.p24 = float(pow(2, 24))
self.unpack32int = Struct(">%sL" % size).unpack
def unpack(self, data):
int32 = self.unpack32int(data)
return [self.ibm2ieee(i) for i in int32]
def ibm2ieee(self, int32):
if int32 == 0:
return 0.0
sign = int32 >> 31 & 0x01
exponent = int32 >> 24 & 0x7f
mantissa = (int32 & 0x00ffffff) / self.p24
return (1 - 2 * sign) * mantissa * pow(16, exponent - 64)
if __name__ == "__main__":
import doctest
doctest.testmod()
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