QOTW: "It's hard to make a mistake by having too many short and simple functions. And much too easy to make them when you have too few ;-)" - Thomas Bartkus "Argh, the following is valid Python syntax: assert a is not b - XXX in-progress" - Armin Rigo (found on Michael Hudson's blog) A GREAT Python event is taking place right now: http://wiki.python.org/moin/NeedForSpeed/ Python does not encourage one-liners, but when they work they are often beautiful and efficient, like this one for counting distinct lines in a file. http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/332003a1a24205d3 Starting with Python 2.4 you may have to explicitly mask away the bits that used to fall off the edge of the world in previous versions. http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_frm/thread/54b60719b4... Paul Cannon is working on Noodle, a lisp flavour targeting Python bytecode. http://noodler.blogspot.com/2006/05/release.html Modules lack a __getattr__ method. However, that is not a limitation in practice: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/68e0c33b843a8a64 Mike Foord and John J. Lee have teamed to improve the "Missing urllib2 Manual" slated to become an official Howto. http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/weblog/arch_d7_2006_05_20.shtml#e335 When Python balks at printing non-ascii characters to stdout, the shell is likely to be the culprit, as Serge Orlov and others work out. http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_frm/thread/7a5ce0d2f4... Dave Kuhlman has updated his FAQ concerning XML handling with Python. http://www.rexx.com/~dkuhlman/pyxmlfaq.html Among the folks Bruce Eckel has interviewed are Guido van Rossum and Jim Fulton. http://www.mindviewinc.com/mediacast/interviews/Index.php Still undecided whether you need "wxPython in Action", the new book written by Noel Rappin and Robin Dunn (the latter also the main developer of the wxPython GUI framework)? Get a feel for what to expect from this excerpt: http://www.pythonthreads.com/articles/python/incorporating-into-wxpython-par... If you want to access only part of a pickle file cPickle has a fast-forward that avoids loading stuff you are not interested in. http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/d55b2e987563422a ======================================================================== Everything Python-related you want is probably one or two clicks away in these pages: Python.org's Python Language Website is the traditional center of Pythonia http://www.python.org Notice especially the master FAQ http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html PythonWare complements the digest you're reading with the marvelous daily python url http://www.pythonware.com/daily Mygale is a news-gathering webcrawler that specializes in (new) World-Wide Web articles related to Python. http://www.awaretek.com/nowak/mygale.html While cosmetically similar, Mygale and the Daily Python-URL are utterly different in their technologies and generally in their results. For far, FAR more Python reading than any one mind should absorb, much of it quite interesting, several pages index much of the universe of Pybloggers. http://lowlife.jp/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/PythonProgrammersWeblog http://www.planetpython.org/ http://mechanicalcat.net/pyblagg.html comp.lang.python.announce announces new Python software. Be sure to scan this newsgroup weekly. http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python.announce Python411 indexes "podcasts ... to help people learn Python ..." Updates appear more-than-weekly: http://www.awaretek.com/python/index.html Steve Bethard, Tim Lesher, and Tony Meyer continue the marvelous tradition early borne by Andrew Kuchling, Michael Hudson and Brett Cannon of intelligently summarizing action on the python-dev mailing list once every other week. http://www.python.org/dev/summary/ The Python Package Index catalogues packages. http://www.python.org/pypi/ The somewhat older Vaults of Parnassus ambitiously collects references to all sorts of Python resources. http://www.vex.net/~x/parnassus/ Much of Python's real work takes place on Special-Interest Group mailing lists http://www.python.org/sigs/ Python Success Stories--from air-traffic control to on-line match-making--can inspire you or decision-makers to whom you're subject with a vision of what the language makes practical. http://www.pythonology.com/success The Python Software Foundation (PSF) has replaced the Python Consortium as an independent nexus of activity. It has official responsibility for Python's development and maintenance. http://www.python.org/psf/ Among the ways you can support PSF is with a donation. http://www.python.org/psf/donate.html Kurt B. Kaiser publishes a weekly report on faults and patches. http://www.google.com/groups?as_usubject=weekly%20python%20patch Although unmaintained since 2002, the Cetus collection of Python hyperlinks retains a few gems. http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_python.html Python FAQTS http://python.faqts.com/ The Cookbook is a collaborative effort to capture useful and interesting recipes. http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python Among several Python-oriented RSS/RDF feeds available are http://www.python.org/channews.rdf http://bootleg-rss.g-blog.net/pythonware_com_daily.pcgi http://python.de/backend.php For more, see http://www.syndic8.com/feedlist.php?ShowMatch=python&ShowStatus=all The old Python "To-Do List" now lives principally in a SourceForge reincarnation. http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=355470&group_id=5470&func=browse http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0042/ The online Python Journal is posted at pythonjournal.cognizor.com. editor@pythonjournal.com and editor@pythonjournal.cognizor.com welcome submission of material that helps people's understanding of Python use, and offer Web presentation of your work. del.icio.us presents an intriguing approach to reference commentary. It already aggregates quite a bit of Python intelligence. http://del.icio.us/tag/python *Py: the Journal of the Python Language* http://www.pyzine.com Archive probing tricks of the trade: http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python&num=100 http://groups.google.com/groups?meta=site%3Dgroups%26group%3Dcomp.lang.pytho... Previous - (U)se the (R)esource, (L)uke! - messages are listed here: http://www.ddj.com/topic/python/ (requires subscription) http://groups-beta.google.com/groups?q=python-url+group:comp.lang.python*&start=0&scoring=d& http://purl.org/thecliff/python/url.html (dormant) or http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_q=+Python-URL!&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python There is *not* an RSS for "Python-URL!"--at least not yet. Arguments for and against are occasionally entertained. Suggestions/corrections for next week's posting are always welcome. E-mail to <Python-URL@phaseit.net> should get through. To receive a new issue of this posting in e-mail each Monday morning (approximately), ask <claird@phaseit.net> to subscribe. Mention "Python-URL!". -- The Python-URL! Team-- Dr. Dobb's Journal (http://www.ddj.com) is pleased to participate in and sponsor the "Python-URL!" project.