In Conjure, I need to read in a long file, too long to slurp in, and I wish to pass the open file pointer into method, which I can call recursively, reading until it is empty. I have found examples using open-with, but is there a way to open a file and then read from it inside of a function? Points to examples or docs would be helpful.
2 Answers
Is this along the lines of what you have in mind?
(defn process-file [f reader]
(loop [lines (line-seq reader) acc []]
(if (empty? lines)
acc
(recur (rest lines) (conj acc (f (first lines)))))))
(let [filename "/path/to/input-file"
reader (java.io.BufferedReader. (java.io.FileReader. filename))]
(process-file pr-str reader))
Note that if you (require '[clojure.java.io :as io]) you can use io/reader as a shortcut for invoking BufferedReader and FileReader directly. However, using with-open would still be preferable - it will ensure the file is closed properly, even in the event of an exception - and you can absolutely pass the open reader to other functions from within a with-open block.
Here's how you could make use of with-open in the scenario you use in the answer you've posted, passing the reader and writer objects to a function:
(with-open [rdr (io/reader "/path/to/input-file")]
(with-open [wtr (io/writer "/path/to/output-file")]
(transfer rdr wtr)))
I should also note that in my example scenario it would be preferable to map or reduce over the line-seq but I used loop/recur since you asked about recursion.
Here's the ClojureDocs page on the clojure.java.io namespace.
Comments
Playing around I discovered the answer, so for any others looking, here is a version of my solution.
(defn transfer
[inFile outFile]
(.write outFile (.read inFile))
...
...
(transfer (clojure.java.io/reader "fileIn.txt)
(clojure.java.io/writer "out.txt"))