changeset 4:79ef88975054

created a function to check if a line has data or not.

--- a/python-intro.py	Tue Feb 05 16:34:56 2013 +0000
+++ b/python-intro.py	Tue Feb 05 17:05:06 2013 +0000
@@ -1,16 +1,24 @@
+def is_data(line):
+    """ Returns true if the line has data
+    and false otherwise (header, comments, etc)"""
+
+    if line.startswith('#'):
+        # skip comments
+        return False
+    elif line.startswith('D'):
+        # skip title row
+        return False
+    else:
+        return True
+
+# script starts here...
 source = open('data.txt', 'r')
 
 number = 0
 
 # count number of data records
 for line in source:
-    if line.startswith('#'):
-        # skip comments
-        pass
-    elif line.startswith('D'):
-        # skip title row
-        pass
-    else:
+    if is_data(line) == True:
         number = number + 1
 
 source.close()