Mailman 3 March 2000 - Python-Dev

1.5.2->1.6 Changes
by Moshe Zadka March 29, 2000

March 29, 2000

I'm starting to compile a list of changes from 1.5.2 to 1.6. Here's what I came up with so far -- string objects now have methods (though they are still immutable) -- unicode support: Unicode strings are marked with u"string", and there is support for arbitrary encoders/decoders -- "in" operator can now be overriden in user-defined classes to mean anything: it calls the magic method __contains__ -- SRE is the new regular expression engine. re.py became an interface to the same engine. The new engine fully supports unicode regular expressions. -- Some methods which would take multiple arguments and treat them as a tuple were fixed: list.{append, insert, remove, count}, socket.connect -- Some modules were made obsolete -- filecmp.py (supersedes the old cmp.py and dircmp.py modules), -- tabnanny.py (make sure the source file doesn't assume a specific tab-width) -- win32reg (win32 registry editor) -- unicode module, and codecs package -- New calling syntax: f(*args, **kw) equivalent to apply(f, args, kw) -- _tkinter now uses the object, rather then string, interface to Tcl. Please e-mail me personally if you think of any other changes, and I'll try to integrate them into a complete "changes" document. Thanks in advance -- Moshe Zadka <mzadka(a)geocities.com>. http://www.oreilly.com/news/prescod_0300.html http://www.linux.org.il -- we put the penguin in .com

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Re: [Python-Dev] [1.6]: UserList, Dict: Do we need a UserString class?
by pf＠artcom-gmbh.de March 29, 2000

March 29, 2000

Hi! > On Wed, 29 Mar 2000, Peter Funk wrote: > > > class UserString: > > def __init__(self, string=""): > > self.data = string > ^^^^^^^ Moshe Zadka wrote: > Why do you feel there is a need to default? Strings are immutable I had something like this in my mind: class MutableString(UserString): """Python strings are immutable objects. But of course this can be changed in a derived class implementing the missing methods. >>> s = MutableString() >>> s[0:5] = "HUH?" """ def __setitem__(self, char): .... def __setslice__(self, i, j, substring): .... > What about __int__, __long__, __float__, __str__, __hash__? > And what about __getitem__ and __contains__? > And __complex__? I was obviously too tired and too eager to get this out! Thanks for reviewing and responding so quickly. I will add them. Regards, Peter -- Peter Funk, Oldenburger Str.86, D-27777 Ganderkesee, Germany, Fax:+49 4222950260 office: +49 421 20419-0 (ArtCom GmbH, Grazer Str.8, D-28359 Bremen)

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yeah! for Jeremy and Greg
by David Ascher March 29, 2000

March 29, 2000

I'm thrilled to see the extended call syntax patches go in! One less wart in the language! Jeremy ZitBlaster Hylton and Greg Noxzema Ewing! --david

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__debug__ and py_compile
by Greg Ward March 29, 2000

March 29, 2000

Hi all -- a particularly active member of the Distutils-SIG brought the global '__debug__' flag to my attention, since I (and thus my code) didn't know if calling 'py_compile.compile()' would result in a ".pyc" or a ".pyo" file. It appears that, using __debug__, you can determine what you're going to get. Cool! However, it doesn't look like you can *choose* what you're going to get. Is this correct? Ie. does the presence/absence of -O when the interpreter starts up *completely* decide how code is compiled? Also, can I rely on __debug__ being there in the future? How about in the past? I still occasionally ponder making Distutils compatible with Python 1.5.1. Thanks -- Greg

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[1.6]: UserList, Dict: Do we need a UserString class?
by andy＠reportlab.com March 29, 2000

March 29, 2000

On Mon, 27 Mar 2000 12:00:31 -0500 (EST), Peter Funk wrote: > Do we need a UserString class? This will probably be useful on top of the i18n stuff in due course, so I'd like it. Something Mike Da Silva and I have discussed a lot is implementing a higher-level 'typed string' library on top of the Unicode stuff. A 'typed string' is like a string, but knows what encoding it is in - possibly Unicode, possibly a native encoding and embodies some basic type safety and convenience notions, like not being able to add a Shift-JIS and an EUC string together. Iteration would always be per character, not per byte; and a certain amount of magic would say that if the string was (say) Japanese, it would acquire a few extra methods for doing some Japan-specific things like expanding half-width katakana. Of course, we can do this anyway, but I think defining the API clearly in UserString is a great idea. - Andy Robinson

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None as a keyword / class methods
by gvwilson＠nevex.com March 28, 2000

March 28, 2000

[The following passed the Ping test, so I'm posting it here] If None becomes a keyword, I would like to ask whether it could be used to signal that a method is a class method, as opposed to an instance method: class Ping: def __init__(self, arg): ...as usual... def method(self, arg): ...no change... def classMethod(None, arg): ...equivalent of C++ 'static'... p = Ping("thinks this is cool") # as always p.method("who am I to argue?") # as always Ping.classMethod("hey, cool!") # no 'self' p.classMethod("hey, cool!") # also selfless I'd also like to ask (separately) that assignment to None be defined as a no-op, so that programmers can write: year, month, None, None, None, None, weekday, None, None = gmtime(time()) instead of having to create throw-away variables to fill in slots in tuples that they don't care about. I think both behaviors are readable; the first provides genuinely new functionality, while I often found the second handy when I was doing logic programming. Greg

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Re: [Python-checkins] CVS: python/dist/src/Modules _tkinter.c,1.91,1.92
by pf＠artcom-gmbh.de March 28, 2000

March 28, 2000

Hi! Guido van Rossum: > Modified Files: > _tkinter.c [...] > *** 491,501 **** > > v->interp = Tcl_CreateInterp(); > - > - #if TKMAJORMINOR == 8001 > - TclpInitLibraryPath(baseName); > - #endif /* TKMAJORMINOR */ > > ! #if defined(macintosh) && TKMAJORMINOR >= 8000 > ! /* This seems to be needed since Tk 8.0 */ > ClearMenuBar(); > TkMacInitMenus(v->interp); > --- 475,481 ---- > > v->interp = Tcl_CreateInterp(); > > ! #if defined(macintosh) > ! /* This seems to be needed */ > ClearMenuBar(); > TkMacInitMenus(v->interp); > *************** Are you sure that the call to 'TclpInitLibraryPath(baseName);' is not required in Tcl/Tk 8.1, 8.2, 8.3 ? I would propose the following: +#if TKMAJORMINOR >= 8001 + TclpInitLibraryPath(baseName); +# endif /* TKMAJORMINOR */ Here I quote from the Tcl8.3 source distribution: /* *--------------------------------------------------------------------------- * * TclpInitLibraryPath -- * * Initialize the library path at startup. We have a minor * metacircular problem that we don't know the encoding of the * operating system but we may need to talk to operating system * to find the library directories so that we know how to talk to * the operating system. * * We do not know the encoding of the operating system. * We do know that the encoding is some multibyte encoding. * In that multibyte encoding, the characters 0..127 are equivalent * to ascii. * * So although we don't know the encoding, it's safe: * to look for the last slash character in a path in the encoding. * to append an ascii string to a path. * to pass those strings back to the operating system. * * But any strings that we remembered before we knew the encoding of * the operating system must be translated to UTF-8 once we know the * encoding so that the rest of Tcl can use those strings. * * This call sets the library path to strings in the unknown native * encoding. TclpSetInitialEncodings() will translate the library * path from the native encoding to UTF-8 as soon as it determines * what the native encoding actually is. * * Called at process initialization time. * * Results: * None. */ Sorry, but I don't know enough about this in connection with the unicode patches and if we should pay attention to this. Regards, Peter -- Peter Funk, Oldenburger Str.86, D-27777 Ganderkesee, Germany, Fax:+49 4222950260 office: +49 421 20419-0 (ArtCom GmbH, Grazer Str.8, D-28359 Bremen)

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Do we need to support Tcl/Tk versions before 8.0?
by Guido van Rossum March 28, 2000

March 28, 2000

The _tkinter.c source code is littered with #ifdefs that mostly center around distinguishing between Tcl/Tk 8.0 and older versions. The two pre-8.0 version supported seem to be 7.5/4.1 and 7.6/4.2. Would it be reasonable to assume that everybody is using at least Tcl/Tk version 8.0? This would simplify the code somewhat. Or should I ask this in a larger forum? --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

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Re: [Python-Dev] module reorg (was: 1.6 job list)
by Jack Jansen March 28, 2000

March 28, 2000

> On Sat, 25 Mar 2000, David Ascher wrote: > > > This made me think of one issue which is worth considering -- is there a > > mechanism for third-party packages to hook into the standard naming > > hierarchy? It'd be weird not to have the oracle and sybase modules within > > the db toplevel package, for example. > > My position is that any 3rd party module decides for itself where it wants > to live -- once we formalized the framework. Consider PyGTK/PyGnome, > PyQT/PyKDE -- they should live in the UI package too... For separate modules, yes. For packages this is different. As a point in case think of MacPython: it could stuff all mac-specific packages under the toplevel "mac", but it would probably be nicer if it could extend the existing namespace. It is a bit silly if mac users have to do "from mac.text.encoding import macbinary" but "from text.encoding import binhex", just because BinHex support happens to live in the core (purely for historical reasons). But maybe this holds only for the platform distributions, then it shouldn't be as much of a problem as there aren't that many. -- Jack Jansen | ++++ stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal ++++ Jack.Jansen(a)oratrix.com | ++++ if you agree copy these lines to your sig ++++ www.oratrix.nl/~jack | see http://www.xs4all.nl/~tank/spg-l/sigaction.htm

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Re: [Python-Dev] Great Renaming - Straw Man 0.2
by Jack Jansen March 28, 2000

March 28, 2000

> Okay, here's another shot at it. Notice a few things: > ... > bin > ... > image ... > sound > ... These I don't like, I think image and sound should be either at toplevel, or otherwise in a separate package (mm?). I know images and sounds are customarily stored in binary files, but so are databases and other things. Hmm, the bin group in general seems to be a bit of a catch-all. gzip, zlib and chunk definitely belong together, but struct is a wholly different beast. -- Jack Jansen | ++++ stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal ++++ Jack.Jansen(a)oratrix.com | ++++ if you agree copy these lines to your sig ++++ www.oratrix.nl/~jack | see http://www.xs4all.nl/~tank/spg-l/sigaction.htm

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