Yesterday I had to parse a very simple binary data file - the rule is, look for two bytes in a row that are both 0xAA, then the next byte will be a length byte, then skip 9 bytes and output the given amount of data from there. Repeat to the end of the file.

My solution did work, and was very quick to put together (even though I am a C programmer at heart, I still think it was quicker for me to write this in Python than it would have been in C) - BUT, it is clearly not at all Pythonic and it reads like a C program (and not a very good one at that!)

What would be a better / more Pythonic approach to this? Is a simple FSM like this even still the right choice in Python?

My solution:

#! /usr/bin/python

import sys

f = open(sys.argv[1], "rb")

state = 0

if f:
    for byte in f.read():
        a = ord(byte)       
        if state == 0:
            if a == 0xAA:
                state = 1
        elif state == 1:
            if a  == 0xAA:
                state = 2
            else: 
                state = 0
        elif state == 2:
            count = a;
            skip = 9
            state = 3
        elif state == 3:
            skip = skip -1
            if skip == 0:
                state = 4
        elif state == 4:
             print "%02x" %a
             count = count -1 
             if count == 0:
                 state = 0
                 print "\r\n"