Mailman 3 October 1999 - Python-Dev

Misleading syntax error text
by M.-A. Lemburg Nov. 1, 1999

Nov. 1, 1999

[Extracted from the psa-members list...] Gordon McMillan wrote: > > Chris Fama wrote, > > And now the rub: the exact same function definition has passed > > through byte-compilation perfectly OK many times before with no > > problems... of course, this points rather clearly to the > > preceding code, but it illustrates a failing in Python's syntax > > error messages, and IMHO a fairly serious one at that, if this is > > indeed so. > > My simple … [View More]

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dircache.py
by Gordon McMillan Nov. 1, 1999

Nov. 1, 1999

Pursuant to my volunteering to implement Guido's plan to combine cmp.py, cmpcache.py, dircmp.py and dircache.py into filecmp.py, I did some investigating of dircache.py. I find it completely unreliable. On my NT box, the mtime of the directory is updated (on average) 2 secs after a file is added, but within 10 tries, there's always one in which it takes more than 100 secs (and my test script quits). My Linux box hardly ever detects a change within 100 secs. I've tried a number of ways … [View More]

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Embedding Python when using different calling conventions.
by Mark Hammond Oct. 30, 1999

Oct. 30, 1999

This is a bit yucky, but still a valid problem. Malte Kroeger [kroeger(a)bigfoot.com] recently posted to python-help with a problem. He has an existing Windows project that he wishes to use Python in. This project does not use the standard __cdecl calling convention that Python uses, for various reasons known only to him. As it is an existing project and quite probably a large, complex one, I am willing to accept that moving his existing project to match Python's calling convention is not … [View More]

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Irrelevant but very informative piece of patent law
by David Ascher Oct. 19, 1999

Oct. 19, 1999

http://slashdot.org/features/99/10/19/1032254.shtml Very well written, too. Many many standard deviations away from standard slashdot fare. --da

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forwarded message from Greg Rose
by Barry A. Warsaw Oct. 19, 1999

Oct. 19, 1999

Folks, I'm resending this message here for Greg Rose. If anybody can help him out, please respond to ggr(a)qualcomm.com (not to me). Greg, if you still get no response, then I suggest sending the mssage to greater python-list(a)python.org. There's gotta be /somebody/ out there who is interested in participating. -Barry ------- start of forwarded message (RFC 934 encapsulation) ------- From: Greg Rose <ggr(a)qualcomm.com> To: bwarsaw(a)python.org Subject: Re: python advocate in Perl/… [View More]Python/Tcl bakeoff Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 20:28:37 +1000 X-Sender: ggr2(a)avalon.qualcomm.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1 At 17:07 30/09/1999 -0400, you wrote: >Hope that helps. If neither of these guys can do it, and can't >suggest someone who can, let me know and we'll post an announcement on >all the usual Python haunts. Well, as they say, those who volunteer end up doing things... I've tried both of your associates, and about three or four others who were recommended, and have struck out. I'd really appreciate your help trying to find someone competent to do this. Bear in mind that the audience is sysadmins, not generic programmers. thanks in advance, Greg. Here's the text I've been sending out, but you should feel free to modify non-factual stuff: Long ago there was a shell/perl/awk bakeoff invited talk at a USENIX conference somewhere or other. It was fun for all involved, and was very well received. We're looking to do something similar at the LISA conference in Seattle. You have been recommended as Python advocate. It would be on thursday 11th november. The idea would be to have a moderator and three advocates, and a slightly rowdy audience. We'd ask each advocate to nominate in advance some simple sysadmin task which shows their language to its advantage, and also to do the solutions to the other two's tasks... then there'd be some room for (presubmitted) tasks from the audience to be solved on the fly. Any suggestions you have regarding how to make it work would be appreciated. Are you intending to attend LISA? Would you be willing to do this? (We have Tom Christiansen for perl and Brent Welch for Tcl/Tk.) Greg Rose INTERNET: ggr(a)Qualcomm.com Qualcomm Australia VOICE: +61-2-9181-4851 FAX: +61-2-9181-5470 Suite 410, Birkenhead Point, http://people.qualcomm.com/ggr/ Drummoyne NSW 2047 232B EC8F 44C6 C853 D68F E107 E6BF CD2F 1081 A37C ------- end ------- [View Less]

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Corporate installations
by Tim Peters Oct. 18, 1999

Oct. 18, 1999

Python is getting used widely enough in my place of employment that people are agitating for a common installation (personal variants are screwing people too often). Various machines are running Win95, Win98, NT, Windows2000, assorted flavors of Linux, Solaris, Irix and MacOS. I'll choke on that whole banana when it's shoved down my throat. For starters, I just need to get it running across Windows platforms. Never looked into this before, and it seems to be exceedingly complicated right … [View More]out of the box <0.5 wink>: D:\Python>python Python 1.5.2 (#0, Apr 13 1999, 10:51:12) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32 Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam >>> import sys ['', 'D:\\Python\\win32', 'D:\\Python\\win32\\lib', 'D:\\Python', 'D:\\Python\\Pythonwin', 'D:\\Python\\Lib\\plat-win', 'D:\\Python\\Lib', 'D:\\Python\\DLLs', 'D:\\Python\\Lib\\lib-tk', 'D:\\PYTHON\\DLLs', 'D:\\PYTHON\\lib', 'D:\\PYTHON\\lib\\plat-win', 'D:\\PYTHON\\lib\\lib-tk', 'D:\\PYTHON'] >>> Where does all that stuff come from? The first is apparently the current directory; cool. The next 4 appear to come from MarkH's stuff, via the registry. The next 4 appear to come from Python's own registry PythonPath key. The 4 after that are a mystery, and duplicate the preceding 4 (except for meaningless-- it's Windows <wink> -- case differences). The last is another mystery. site.py isn't implicated in any of them (same thing when running with -S). I suppose this is a clue: D:\Python>set PYTHONHOME=ick;fooey D:\Python>python Python 1.5.2 (#0, Apr 13 1999, 10:51:12) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32 Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam >>> import sys >>> sys.path ['', 'D:\\Python\\win32', 'D:\\Python\\win32\\lib', 'D:\\Python', 'D:\\Python\\Pythonwin', 'D:\\Python\\Lib\\plat-win', 'D:\\Python\\Lib', 'D:\\Python\\DLLs', 'D:\\Python\\Lib\\lib-tk', 'ick', 'fooey\\DLLs', 'ick', 'fooey\\lib', 'ick', 'fooey\\lib\\plat-win', 'ick', 'fooey\\lib\\lib-tk', 'D:\\PYTHON'] >>> Doesn't appear to be sensible, but at least it's predictable <wink>. I was surprised to find that setting PYTHONPATH can't be used to override any of this -- it just inserts even more stuff, into sys.path[1:1]. Do I really care? Not much -- the complexity just makes it hard to get a mental model of what Python *thinks* it's trying to accomplish here, and so harder to figure out what needs to be done. Which is pretty severe: "Dragon std" apps must run the same version of Python (which can be local) with the same libraries (which must be network-mounted), regardless of whatever version of Python each user may have built on their own, and regardless of their registry settings or envar values. I think this means I need to distribute a python15.dll and python.exe (via our source control system) into a directory very early on the PATH (other common .exe's are distributed this way, so no big deal), and add a sitecustomize.py that replaces all of sys.path with the Big Four (Lib\plat-win, Lib, DLLs, and Lib\lib-tk) expressed as UNC paths, + the common Dragon dir. Network name mangling being what it is, I suppose I'll also need to force PYTHONCASEOK. There's no way to do that from within Python, is there? If not, everyone going through "unfortunate" paths in the network will have to set that themselves. Anyone have better ideas? That shouldn't be hard <wink>. the-difference-between-one-user-and-two-is-infinite-ly y'rs - tim [View Less]

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Walking up the package hierarchy
by M.-A. Lemburg Oct. 14, 1999

Oct. 14, 1999

Hi everybody, while I'm still thinking about writing the import manager, here is a patch that implements the walk-up-the-hierarchy import scheme that got so much positive feedback. I'm intending to use this implementation as proof of concept for the switch to my new package structure, but wouldn't mind seeing something like it the distribution as well ;-) It changes the default import mechanism to work like this: >>> import d try a.b.c.d try a.b.d try a.d try d fail instead of just … [View More]

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new opportunities for obfuscation... ;-)
by Skip Montanaro Oct. 12, 1999

Oct. 12, 1999

Barry's note prompted me to update my Python tree. The result: >>> ".".join(dir("")) 'capitalize.count.endswith.find.index.join.lower.lstrip.replace.rfind.rindex.rstrip.split.startswith.strip.swapcase.translate.upper' A job well done, Barry... Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/ skip(a)mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/ 847-971-7098 | Python: Programming the way Guido indented...

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string methods branch
by Barry A. Warsaw Oct. 12, 1999

Oct. 12, 1999

Guido has agreed to let me mainline the string methods branch. Those of you on python-checkins should have seen the CVS messages by now. This is a good thing because I think we can all agree we hate CVS branches. For me, that final merge put the nail in the coffin. Anyway, those of you who have put off playing with string methods until now should just be able to do a CVS update, rebuild, and go. You should read the revision log messages for the branch checkins for details of the changes. … [View More]

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RE: [Python-Dev] an alternative language for CP4E, perhaps?
by Ken Manheimer Oct. 6, 1999

Oct. 6, 1999

Concerning the possibility of cobolscript, i wrote: > said), i guess someone thinks there's leverage in making cobol a scripting > language. I think it's not so different than making interpreted versions > of C (but i'm not very C friendly). After posting i thought this might come off as more ignorantly bigoted than i meant for it to seem:-) I was trying to say that C doesn't seem very well suited to scripting/running interpreted, like cobol - not that C is as fraught with ancient … [View More]

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Re: [Python-Dev] an alternative language for CP4E, perhaps?
by Jack Jansen Oct. 6, 1999

Oct. 6, 1999

> http://www.cobolscript.com/ > > "[COBOL's] just a language whose superiority for > developing certain types of modern systems has > been overlooked until now" The whole site sort-of makes me wonder whether this is one big elaborate joke. But if it is somebody put an incredible amount of work in it. The funny thing is that the idea of using Cobol for web-programming _did_ initially strike me as a neat idea: because of the elaborate data descriptions and report … [View More]

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an alternative language for CP4E, perhaps?
by Fredrik Lundh Oct. 6, 1999

Oct. 6, 1999

http://www.cobolscript.com/ "[COBOL's] just a language whose superiority for developing certain types of modern systems has been overlooked until now" PROCEDURE DIVISION. 0000-MAIN. DISPLAY WEB-PAGE-HEADER. ACCEPT DATA FROM WEBPAGE. COMPUTE grand_total = subtotal *(1 sales_tax_rate). DISPLAY WEB-PAGE-BODY. DISPLAY WEB-PAGE-FOOTER. well, why not? :-) </F>

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Alternative Approach to Relative Imports
by M.-A. Lemburg Oct. 4, 1999

Oct. 4, 1999

Hi everybody, I'm currently busy converting my code to use mx.DateTime instead of just DateTime and must say that this is a real pain. Now instead of reviving the __ discussion I'd like to turn to what could be a workable compromise (I think Jim proposed something along these lines already and there was similar code in ni.py). The proposal is really only an addition to the lookup scheme used by the importer. No additional syntax is involved and best of all, it is backward compatible... The … [View More]

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ESR on slashdot
by Mark Hammond Oct. 3, 1999

Oct. 3, 1999

Just as a matter of interest, here is a question put to ESR and his answer. We certainly could do alot worse than to have ESR becoming a real Python advocate :-) If only Guido himself could find time to work on 1.6, we would be "in like Flynn" :-) Mark. shawnhargreaves asks: You've always been involved in hacker projects outside of just coding (eg. the Jargon File), but over the last year or so the spokesperson role seems to have grown into a fulltime job. How long is it since you last sat … [View More]

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Naming and Binding of Objects (was: Relative Package Imports)
by Vladimir Marangozov Oct. 3, 1999

Oct. 3, 1999

The relative import thread has hit me with full force. I'm not sure I understand all of what has been said, but since I know this is mainly a naming issue, I want to point you to one of the best CS papers I have had in my hands. It's not really my style to recommend references, but this one should be of major interest to this audience (and Python respectively): Saltzer J., "Naming and Binding of Objects", in Bayer R., "Operating Systems - An Advanced Course", pp. 99-208, LNCS 60, 1978. It's … [View More]

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getopt helper?
by Mark Hammond Oct. 3, 1999

Oct. 3, 1999

A little thought I have had a few times now, so it is time to pass it on for comment. Basically _every_ time I use getopt, I write code like this: import getopt try: opts, args = getopt.getopt(sys.argv[1:], "slc:d:e:") except getopt.error, why: print why print usage % (os.path.basename(sys.argv[0],)) sys.exit(1) Every single time. I have never used getopt without this code. How about we put this functionality into getopt itself? It could be triggered either by adding a new "… [View More]

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