The best way to filter a log by a dates range in python

Question

What\'s the best way to print log lines that match a datetime range. For example:

I would like to print only lines with dates from: 2012/09/30-00:00:10 to: 2012/09/

Answer 1

.startswith() example:

prefixes = tuple("2012/09/30-00:00:1%d" % i for i in range(3))
with open('mylog.log', 'rb') as file:
    print ''.join(line for line in file if line.startswith(prefixes)),

You could optimize it by using a single static prefix and then testing preselected lines using a regex or datetime objects later.

If the lines are sorted by date in the input; you could break earlier without reading the whole file.