Mailman 3 June 2000 - Python-Dev

RFC: Including PIL in 1.6
by Eric S. Raymond June 23, 2000

June 23, 2000

Jack Jansen <jack(a)oratrix.nl>: > I include PIL in the standard MacPython and Mac users are apparently > very happy with that [...] I think it's time to consider including PIL in the core Python 1.6 release. I've been following the work being done over there, and I believe the code has reached a sufficient level of maturity to justify this. The "Batteries are included" philosophy seems to me to imply that we ought to be looking for application libraries to promote into the core once we're satisfied that they meet core-Pythonic standards of good API design, stability, general usefulness, and documentation quality. PIL seems to me like a good candidate on all counts. Guido has to make the final call, of course. But let's have the discussion now so we can develop a yea or nay consensus on ther list. -- <a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr">Eric S. Raymond</a> Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries *by a government*, which we might expect in a country *without government*, our calamities is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer." -- Thomas Paine

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Warnings in mmapmodule
by Tim Peters June 22, 2000

June 22, 2000

I get these warnings in Modules/mmapmodule.c, all about signed/unsigned mismatches: Modules\mmapmodule.c(571) : warning C4018: '>=' : signed/unsigned mismatch if (i < 0 || i >= self->size) { Modules\mmapmodule.c(586) : warning C4018: '>' : signed/unsigned mismatch else if (ilow > self->size) Modules\mmapmodule.c(592) : warning C4018: '>' : signed/unsigned mismatch else if (ihigh > self->size) Modules\mmapmodule.c(631) : warning C4018: '>' : signed/unsigned mismatch else if (ilow > self->size) Modules\mmapmodule.c(637) : warning C4018: '>' : signed/unsigned mismatch else if (ihigh > self->size) Modules\mmapmodule.c(664) : warning C4018: '>=' : signed/unsigned mismatch if (i < 0 || i >= self->size) { I'll volunteer to fix these if nobody else does (although at the moment I'm not able to produce either a patch or check in). new-laptops-in-hotel-rooms-have-their-limitations-ly y'rs - tim

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SourceForge vs Windows
by Tim Peters June 22, 2000

June 22, 2000

I have to get SourceForge developer access working with Windows (Win98SE, specifically), so I'll write up detailed instructions along the way, building on Mark Hammond's good clues. Play along! I'll accumulate everyone's input & make a coherent how-to out of it. Today's installment only covers the first step, as it took 12 hours for meto complete it (rotten connectivity today, via 56K modem, requiring many attempts at downloading before one succeeded): [Mark Hammond] > First, get the latest WinCVS. Has some nice new features. Mine shows > as 1.1b13. It has a slightly slicker more windowsy look than the > older one. What we really want is the version with the Options/Preferences > dialog that allows you to supply the RAS identity file when you select > SSH Server as the auth method. Previous versions allow you to select > the SSH Server, but give you nowhere to put the identity file. Hence > previous versions used a batch file wrapper, which you probably saw > reference to. This version makes it much simpler. I picked up the 1.1b14 version, released 19 Jun 2000, from http://www.wincvs.org/download.html It's a 3.21 Mb zip file. hard-to-blow-it-so-far<wink>-ly y'rs - tim

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Proposal: standard way of defining and executing "atexit" functions...
by Skip Montanaro June 21, 2000

June 21, 2000

Python's sys module defines an exitfunc variable that is settable from Python scripts. At exit, that function will be called with no arguments. While this is a good start at supporting standard cleanup activities, it defines no protocol to be used by modules that wish to use sys.exitfunc, which leads to one of two extremes: 1, two modules wishing to define cleanup functions both clobber sys.exitfunc or 2, to avoid collisions they don't use the functionality provided. At an application level this is okay. Within a single application you can define an application-specific protocol to handle the situation. Unfortunately, this still leaves Python's core modules without a good way to register exit functions. I ran into this problem today. I would really like the rlcompleter module to read and write readline history files from Python. Reading a history file at module startup is no problem, but deciding where to write the history file is a problem. The logical place is at the time sys.exitfunc is executed. For my own applications I long ago wrote a very simple module (called exit.py, appended to this message) that defines two functions: * exit.register_exitfunc takes a function object and a set of optional arguments and appends them to a list. * exit._run_exitfuncs is bound to sys.exitfunc and executes the registered exit functions in the order they appear in the list. I propose exit.py as the starting point for a well-defined protocol for modules to register exit functions without collisions. -- Skip Montanaro, skip(a)mojam.com, http://www.mojam.com/, http://www.musi-cal.com/ On June 24th at 8AM, live your life for an hour as Ricky Byrdsong always lived his - run/walk in the Ricky Byrdsong Memorial 5K or just make a donation: https://www.SignmeupSports.com/Events/Index_Events.asp?EventID=1395 """ allow programmer to define multiple exit functions to be executed upon normal program termination. """ _exithandlers = [] def _run_exitfuncs(): while _exithandlers: func, targs, kargs = _exithandlers[0] apply(func, targs, kargs) _exithandlers.remove(_exithandlers[0]) def register_exitfunc(func, *targs, **kargs): """register a function to be executed upon normal program termination arguments are a function object, and zero or more arguments to pass to it. """ _exithandlers.append((func, targs, kargs)) import sys try: x = sys.exitfunc except AttributeError: sys.exitfunc = _run_exitfuncs del sys if __name__ == "__main__": def x1(): print "running x1" def x2(n): print "running x2(%s)" % `n` def x3(n, kwd=None): print "running x3(%s, kwd=%s)" % (`n`, `kwd`) register_exitfunc(x1) register_exitfunc(x2, 12) register_exitfunc(x3, 5, "bar") register_exitfunc(x3, "no kwd args")

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talking about performance...
by Fredrik Lundh June 21, 2000

June 21, 2000

consider this little program: import time, sre k = u"foo" p = sre.compile(k) s = "*"*500 + k + "*"*500 def f1(): p.search(s) def f2(): s.find(k) def bench(f): t0 = time.clock() for i in range(100000): f() print f, time.clock() - t0 bench(f1) bench(f2) which prints: <function f1 at 7a0680> 2.94704487169 <function f2 at 7a06a0> 10.5247875425 (Windows 95, 233 MHz) if I change the k variable to an 8-bit string, it prints: <function f1 at 7a0740> 2.47613520173 <function f2 at 7a0760> 2.5178698939 (for some reason, sre is still slighty faster...) so in other words, something in unicode land isn't as efficient as it should... </F>

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feeble attempt at list comprehensions doc...
by Skip Montanaro June 21, 2000

June 21, 2000

Attached to this message are two patches, one for Doc/ref/ref5.tex and one for Doc/tut/tut.tex. They provide minimal documentation for list comprehensions. I'm sure just about anyone else could do better. Feel free to embellish. The BNF used in the reference manual doesn't seem to match the BNF in the Grammar file very well, so I'm not even certain I have the correct BNF or have it in the correct place. In particular, I'm pretty sure the BNF for list_for and list_if are incorrect. -- Skip Montanaro, skip(a)mojam.com, http://www.mojam.com/, http://www.musi-cal.com/ On June 24th at 8AM, live your life for an hour as Ricky Byrdsong always lived his - run/walk in the Ricky Byrdsong Memorial 5K or just make a donation: https://www.SignmeupSports.com/Events/Index_Events.asp?EventID=1395

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Installation requirements
by A.M. Kuchling June 21, 2000

June 21, 2000

[Follow-up to the Distutils SIG, please.] There are a few steps needed to find and install a package: 1) Discovery : which module does what I need? 2) Download : where can I get a copy? 3) Security : is this actually from the package author, and not a Trojan? 4) Installation : how do I set it up? 5) Checking for new versions: I have 1.0 installed; is a newer version available? Distutils focuses on the hardest and most complicated step, #4. For #1, you would need to browse through a list of available packages, browse through a hierarchy like Parnassus, or do keyword searches. #2 is pretty simple, since you just get one or more download URLs corresponding to a given package name, using the same database as in #1. For #3, you'd have to check a signature on the downloaded package, using something external like GnuPG. This means this step has to be skipped if the external tool isn't available. We could implement our own signature scheme with Python code, but that's a bad idea; security is hard, and few people will bother to generate keys that are only useful for this one application of distributing Python modules. (Side note: the sdist and bdist_* commands should have a --sign switch to sign the generated .tgz, .rpm, or whatever file.) For #5, the existing stuff in Tools/versioncheck might be partially applicable, though it requires that every package have a text file somewhere which gives the latest version. You'd want to use the same database for everything, to ensure that people actually use it! To start off with, we'd need some sort of generic API to the above functions, so that different interfaces can be written. A command-line interface would then be easiest. I don't know how network communications should be handled: HTTP to CGI scripts that return sets of RFC-822 headers, maybe? Combined with a DNS alias like modules.python.org, or modules.{us,uk,...}.python.org? Some potential sources of inspiration: Debian: apt Perl: CPAM.pm FreeBSD: ports system RPMfind (rpmfind.net) XEmacs: packages system -- A.M. Kuchling http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/ "Jo, it's a pity escapology wasn't part of your curriculum." "Funny you should say that. Look." <shows untied hand> -- The Doctor and Jo, tied up, in "Terror of the Autons"

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Argh...
by Paul Prescod June 20, 2000

June 20, 2000

Okay, this is blatantly off-topic. I'm trying to increase the noise ratio so that people here will go back to comp.lang.python. All I need is for someone to email me in private email what's the Java equivalent of a=sys.argv[0] (it's almost over, it's almost over, it's almost over) Okay, here's an obPython: why doesn't the main module have an __file__ if it happens to be a file. I can understand why one piped in wouldn't but the interpreter knows when the main module is a file. -- Paul Prescod "Music is the stuff between the notes." - Claude Debussy

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Re: [Patches] Adding sip to urlparse
by Andrew M. Kuchling June 20, 2000

June 20, 2000

On Tue, Jun 20, 2000 at 08:18:03PM +0200, Fredrik Lundh quoted FLD: >> What is "sip"? Is it defined by an RFC (which?), or Internet Draft >> (which? what's the expected activity?). Is there a canonical list of all the defined URL types anywhere? I notice that 'ldap' isn't there, and maybe there are more missing. (Some of the ones in there are marginal: who cares about Prospero?) -- A.M. Kuchling http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/ That's so obvious that someone has already got a patent on it. -- Guido van Rossum, 12 Jan 1999

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David Ascher's compile.py script?
by Fred L. Drake, Jr. June 20, 2000

June 20, 2000

Does anyone have a copy of David Ascher's compile.py from his starship pages? The links there appear to be broken, and David appearantly hasn't been able to find time to look for a copy, or can't find it (I've sent him another mail about it in case it has turned up), and documentation users are asking about it. (There's a link from the extending & embedding manual.) If anyone has a copy, perhaps I could find provide a temporary location for it and revise the link in the online documentation to point there, as a stop-gap measure. -Fred -- Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake at beopen.com> BeOpen PythonLabs Team Member

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