import string,sys,MV

# First of all we need to open the ASCII file
# For this we used the Python built-in command "open"
f=open(sys.prefix+'/sample_data/test_col.asc')

# Now we need to read its content
# To read all of its content we use the "readlines" command
# This returns a list of strings, each element of the list represents
# one line in the file
lines=f.readlines()

# Note to read one line at a time (inside a loop for example, if the ascii file is too big
# You can also f.readline()

# Now we can loop through the lines and look at the content
data1=[]
data2=[]

for line in lines:
    # Splits the line into a list of string with seprartion
    # when it finds space or tabs or return
    sp=string.split(line)

    # Now try to see if the first element is a number, if not skip
    # we are only interested in the 2nd and third column here
    try:
        val1=float(sp[1])   # second column
        val2=float(sp[2])   # third column
        
        data1.append(val1)
        data2.append(val2)
        
    except:
        pass       #  we didn't have 2 float at the begining of this line
    
    
# Now converts the 2 datasets to MV for use in other CDAT Packages
data1=MV.array(data1,id='dataset1')
data2=MV.array(data2,id='dataset2')

# Just for fun prints the average of data1
print MV.average(data1)