#!/usr/bin/env python

# import required modules
#
import os
import sys

# main: this is the main function of this Python
#
def main(argv):

    # first method
    #
    lines = []
    with open(argv[1]) as f:
        for line in f:

            # strip the new line character
            #
            print("before strip ...>", line)
            foo = line.rstrip('\n')
            print("after strip ...>", foo)
            
            # find the first non-whitespace
            #
            #i = len(foo) - len(foo.lstrip())
            if (len(foo) != 0) and (foo[0] != '#'):
                lines.append(foo)

    f.close()
    print("------ before reading -------------")
    print(lines)
    print("------ done reading -------------")

    # iterate over lines and break into parts
    #
    print("------ starting parsing -------------")
    for line in lines:
        print("*> splitting: %s" % line)
        parts = line.split()
        print("...>")
        print(parts)
        print("...<")
        parts = line.split('=')
        print("***", parts[0], " = ", parts[1])
    print("------ end of parsing -------------")

    # second method
    #
    print("------ second method  -------------")
    print("------ second method  -------------")
    print("------ second method  -------------")

    for line in open(sys.argv[1],'r').readlines():
        foo = line.rstrip('\n')
        print("2nd method: ", foo)
    print(".....   end of second method   .......")

    # third method
    #
    print("------ third method  -------------")
    print("------ third method  -------------")
    lines = [line.rstrip('\n') for line in open(sys.argv[1])]
    print("3rd method: ", lines)
    print("------ end of third method  -------------")

    print("   ")
    print("   ")
    print("   ")
    #---
    # let's put all this together and write code that opens a file,
    # detects if the first nonwhitespace character is a '#',
    # and if not, splits the line and gets the name and value
    #---

    # open the file with error checking
    #
    try:
        f = open(sys.argv[1])
    except:
        print("***> error opening file... exiting...")
        exit(-1)

    with f:
    
    # read the file into memory
    #
        lines = [line.rstrip('\n') for line in f]
        print("***>", lines)

        # close the file
        #
        f.close()

    print("------ end of fourth method  -------------")

    # loop over the data and only process the lines that don't
    # begin with a comment character
    #
    for line in lines:
        
        # remove spaces and newline chars
        #
        line = line.replace(' ', '').replace('\n', '').replace('\t', '')
        
        # check if the line starts with comments: if it does, skip it, else
        # process it
        #
        if line.startswith('#') or len(line) == 0:
            pass
        else:
            
            # split the line by an inline comment character
            #
            parts = line.split('#')
            print(parts)
            
            # split the first part of the line into name/value pairs
            #
            values = parts[0].split('=')
            
            # display the result
            #
            print('******> name = ', values[0], '***> value = ', values[1])
            
# begin gracefully
#
if __name__ == "__main__":
    main(sys.argv)

#
# end of file