data-conversion

I'm reading a binary file like this: InputStream in = new FileInputStream( file ); byte[] buffer = new byte[1024]; while( ( in.read(buffer ) > -1 ) { int a = // ??? } What I want to do it to read up to 4 bytes and create a int value from those but, I don't know how to do it. I kind of feel like I have to grab 4 bytes at a time, and perform one "byte" operation ( like >> << >> & FF and stuff like that ) to create the new int What's the idiom for this? EDIT Ooops this turn out to be a bit more complex ( to explain ) What I'm trying to do is, read a file ( may be ascii, binary, it doesn't matter

I have a list of dictionaries that looks something like this: toCSV = [{'name':'bob','age':25,'weight':200},{'name':'jim','age':31,'weight':180}] What should I do to convert this to a csv file that looks something like this: name,age,weight bob,25,200 jim,31,180 Matthew Flaschen import csv toCSV = [{'name':'bob','age':25,'weight':200}, {'name':'jim','age':31,'weight':180}] keys = toCSV[0].keys() with open('people.csv', 'wb') as output_file: dict_writer = csv.DictWriter(output_file, keys) dict_writer.writeheader() dict_writer.writerows(toCSV) EDIT: My prior solution doesn't handle the order. As

Recently I have conversation with a colleague about what would be the optimal way to convert List to Map in Java and if there any specific benefits of doing so. I want to know optimal conversion approach and would really appreciate if any one can guide me. Is this good approach: List<Object[]> results; Map<Integer, String> resultsMap = new HashMap<Integer, String>(); for (Object[] o : results) { resultsMap.put((Integer) o[0], (String) o[1]); } Jim Garrison List<Item> list; Map<Key,Item> map = new HashMap<Key,Item>(); for (Item i : list) map.put(i.getKey(),i); Assuming of course that each Item