Reading only single section from LAS

[MandarJKulkarni]

Sometimes it is required to only read ~version section or ~well section from a given las. With ignore_data flag, lasio reads all sections other than '~A' section.

Has it been considered before to read only the specified section using lasio?

example: To read complete file las = lasio.read('tests/examples/sample.las')

To read only version section las = lasio.read('tests/examples/sample.las', section='~v') or las = lasio.read('tests/examples/sample.las', section='version')

[kinverarity1]

I haven't really thought about it... logically in my mind specifying section='~version' would imply the function returns a section - not a complete LAS file. So it should be a new function.

PR #327 (soon to be merged) contains a function lasio.reader.parse_header_items_section which is a bit lower level, but essentially serves that purpose: it reads a chunk out of a file-like object and returns a SectionItems (i.e. LAS file section). You however first also need to know the version of the LAS file, which is why this is all hidden in lasio.read, which also handles the LAS-version-parsing.

You could write a function which is halfway in-between the two above...

[MandarJKulkarni]

Yes, new function would make sense. I'll take a stab at trying out this.

[kinverarity1]

FYI #327 has now been merged to master, and could provide a basis for this functionality.