Read deal.ii binary files written with Vector<>::block_write() into Python numpy arrays

read_deal_vec.py

import sys
import os
import numpy as np

def read_deal_vec(filename):

    if not os.path.isfile(filename):
        print('File not found!')
    else:
        with open(filename, 'rb') as f:
            n = int(f.readline().strip()) # length of the vector

            # skip file till start of vector
            while f.read(1) != b'[':
                pass

            # read vector from file
            v = np.fromfile(f, dtype=float, count=n)

            # check end of file
            eof = f.read(1)

        if eof != b']':
            print('Something has gone wrong! EOF does not match "]".')
        else:
            return v