How to Remove Header info, add date, merge files

[turnerca902]

Hi Folks,

I am working on a little project and hoping someone out there might offer me some info/insight. I have a folder containing about 50 html files where the contents look like this:

Astronomical Applications Dept.
U.S. Naval Observatory
Washington, DC 20392-5420

ST. PETER'S NOVA SCOTIA
o , o ,
W 60 52, N45 39

Altitude and Azimuth of the Sun
Jun 1, 2008
Zone: 3h West of Greenwich

Altitude Azimuth
(E of N)

h m o o
03:55 -11.6 40.5
04:00 -11.0 41.6
04:05 -10.4 42.6
04:10 -9.9 43.6
04:15 -9.2 44.6
04:20 -8.6 45.6
04:25 -8.0 46.6
04:30 -7.4 47.5
04:35 -6.7 48.5
04:40 -6.0 49.5
04:45 -5.4 50.4
04:50 -4.7 51.4
04:55 -4.0 52.3
05:00 -3.3 53.2
05:05 -2.6 54.1
05:10 -1.9 55.0
05:15 -1.2 56.0
05:20 0.1 56.9
05:25 0.7 57.8
05:30 1.4 58.6
05:35 2.1 59.5
05:40 2.8 60.4

What I need to do is remove the header info from each file, and add a date in front of each remaining line so that it looks like this:

2008-06-01 03:55 -11.6 40.5

Finally, I need to merge all the info from these individual files into one master.dat file.

If anyone can offer some advice on how I would be able to do this, that would be awesome.
Thanks Very Much!

[bvdet]

Something like this:[code=Python]import re, os

dir_name = 'your_directory '

def combine_files(d ir_name, fn, prefix):
fileList = []
for file in os.listdir(dir_ name):
dirfile = os.path.join(di r_name, file)
if os.path.isfile( dirfile):
fileList.append (dirfile)
patt = re.compile(r'\d {2}:')
outList = []
for f in fileList:
print 'Parsing file %s' % f
for line in open(f).readlin es():
if patt.match(line ):
outList.append( ' '.join([prefix, line.strip()]))
ff = open(fn, 'w')
ff.write('\n'.j oin(outList))
ff.close()

combine_files(d ir_name, 'combined.dat', '2008-06-01')[/code]