Mailman 3 January 2006 - Python-Dev

str with base
by Jim Jewett 17 Jan '06

17 Jan '06

Raymond wrote: > I presume that only the str() builtin would > change and that the underlying __str__ slot > would continue to be hard-wired to the > (reprfunc) signature. Are you saying that subclasses of str should behave differently from the builtin str, and not in the slots that were added or changed? -jJ

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Re: [Python-Dev] Ph.D. dissertation ideas?
by Brett Cannon 17 Jan '06

17 Jan '06

On 1/12/06, Bill Janssen <janssen(a)parc.com> wrote: > Brett, > > How about building a system that compiles a Python program (possibly > annotated) to an AJAX program? That is, it analyzes the program to > determine what's appropriate and possible for client-side and > server-side, figures out the optimal network API (reduce latency, > reduce calls, reduce data transfer, increase responsiveness), > generates server-side Jython to run in Tomcat (or Python for > mod_python), and client-side XHTML, CSS, and Javascript to implement > the browser-based portion of the application. Oddities of browser > implementations and Javascript VMs would be contained in the compiler > and automatically pushed into the generated code. > > This would be a tremendously useful advance in building distributed > systems that work with the Web. The current approach to AJAX is a bit > like carpentry with old hand tools. You'd probably also push Python > to higher levels of language-ness. > Hmm. It's an idea. I also thought of Python -> JavaScript compiler since JavaScript is not fun and getting to test using Python might be cool. But not sure how useful that would be. Plus I bet someone has does this with Java or something. -Brett

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Birkenfeld's gone
by Georg Brandl 16 Jan '06

16 Jan '06

Hello, today, when two Python developers here had approached me about the PSF, I realized that it is time to correct a mistake which I had made over three years ago, when I discovered Linux, free software, Usenet etc (I was sixteen at that time). I then assumed a different name, partly to anonymize myself as others had advised. When I came across Python, I instantly liked it, and since I had interest in Open Source development in general, I wanted to try and contribute to the development. And, as a matter of course, I used my different name for that. When I realized that I liked the community and the development of Python very much, I decided to "unveil" myself, but I could never overcome myself -- till now. I'm really sorry, and I hope you could at least partly understand what caused me to act so irrational. regards, Georg PS: I'm quite prepared now for the PSU to visit my place and interrog

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Re: [Python-Dev] [Python-checkins] r42064 - python/trunk/Lib/logging/handlers.py
by Tim Peters 16 Jan '06

16 Jan '06

[vinay] >> Log: >> Fixed bug in time-to-midnight calculation. [Skip] > Is there some reason not to use datetime to do this? PEP 291 says logging intends to be compatible with Python 1.5.2, which leaves datetime out. Vinay, rather than: if (currentMinute == 0) and (currentSecond == 0): r = (24 - currentHour) * 60 * 60 # number of hours in seconds else: r = (23 - currentHour) * 60 * 60 r = r + (59 - currentMinute) * 60 # plus the number of minutes (in secs) r = r + (60 - currentSecond) # pl for clarity I suggest this instead: # A module-level constant _MIDNIGHT = 24 * 60 * 60 # number of seconds in a day r = _MIDNIGHT - ((currentHour * 60 + currentMinute) * 60 + currentSecond) That's "obviously correct" instead of "huh?" <wink>.

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PEP 247 and hashlib
by Seo Sanghyeon 16 Jan '06

16 Jan '06

"PEP 247 -- API for Cryptographic Hash Functions" specifies a standard API for hashing modules. new([string]) ... the optional 'string' parameter, if supplied, will be immediately hashed into the object's starting state, as if obj.update(string) was called. But hashlib.new() takes the algorithm name... Does PEP need an update? By the way, I am thinking about mapping .NET's System.Security.Cryptography.HashAlgorithm.Create and created object's ComputeHash method to Python's hash API for IronPython. For that, I'd like to see a clarification. Seo Sanghyeon

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os.path.getmtime on Windows
by Christian Tismer 16 Jan '06

16 Jan '06

Hi Python developers, today I got a complaint from the python.de IRC channel about os.path.getmtime and time zone. How to produce the weird behavior: 1. create a file 2. get it's os.path.getmtime() 3. change your time zone 4. get os.path.getmtime again compare - the time stamps are different. Change the time zone back, and they are identical, again. I was not ableto produce an identity, neither by time.gmtime nor by time.localtime, so I'm a bit confused. I checked the sources, and this is probably not a Python problem. It uses the suggested win32 function properly. But the win32 documentation seems to have no hints about this. I assumend the value would be in UTC, but it is obviously not. Is there a way to circumvent this problem, or am I missing something? If this is not the expected behavior, then it might make sense to find a patch. thanks -- chris -- Christian Tismer :^) <mailto:tismer@stackless.com> tismerysoft GmbH : Have a break! Take a ride on Python's Johannes-Niemeyer-Weg 9A : *Starship* http://starship.python.net/ 14109 Berlin : PGP key -> http://wwwkeys.pgp.net/ work +49 30 802 86 56 mobile +49 173 24 18 776 fax +49 30 80 90 57 05 PGP 0x57F3BF04 9064 F4E1 D754 C2FF 1619 305B C09C 5A3B 57F3 BF04 whom do you want to sponsor today? http://www.stackless.com/

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Ph.D. dissertation ideas?
by Brett Cannon 15 Jan '06

15 Jan '06

It is time once again in my educational career to come to python-dev for help for major project ideas. This time, though, it is for my Ph.D. dissertation (and thus can have larger scope than my masters thesis) but there are funding restrictions (and thus only certain areas I have possible funding for). First off, there are two areas where I have possible funding: XML integration into programming languages and game scripting support (I have a third, AOP for anything, but I don't think AOP is a good match for Python and thus not considering it for Python work). The XML integration I have no direct ideas since I don't use XML. There is the possibility of doing something like the LINQ project (http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/future/linq/default.aspx?pull=/libra…) or something, but I don't know how useful that could be. It would have to be just as generic, though, as the LINQ project in terms of working with intefaces to be Pythonic so it might turn out to be more about language support for querying data. For the game scripting, trying out the active objects for Python is a possibility (or something else that would help with concurrency). Since that could allow for agent objects to be more concurrent it can be argued that it would help with game scripting. I don't have any other ideas for the area of game scripting support. Now I am not locked down to these areas, but they are what I have possible grant money for. If through some miracle someone out there wants to fund my Ph.D. and wants something else worked on for Python, don't be shy. =) Unfortunately I don't think the PSF is up for funding my Ph.D., else I would say I would work on whatever python-dev decided they wanted to worked on that could be done as a dissertation. Anyway, any ideas are appreciated. There is no rush on this, either. Just getting this out there now while I am tentatively exploring possible topics. -Brett

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Checking in a broken test was: Re: [Python-checkins] r41940 - python/trunk/Lib/test/test_compiler.py
by Neal Norwitz 15 Jan '06

15 Jan '06

[moving to python-dev] > On 1/7/06, Reinhold Birkenfeld <reinhold-birkenfeld-nospam(a)wolke7.net> wrote: > > Well, it is not the test that's broken... it's compiler. [In reference to: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-checkins/2006-January/048715.html] In the past, we haven't checked in tests which are known to be broken. There are several good reasons for this. I would prefer you, 1) also fix the code so the test doesn't fail, 2) revert the change (there's still a bug report open, right?), or 3) generalize tests for known bugs. I strongly prefer #1, but have been thinking about adding #3. There are many open bug reports that fall into two broad categories: incorrect behaviour and crashers. I've been thinking about adding two tests which incorporate these bugs as a way of consolidating where the known problems are. Also, it's great when we have test cases that can be moved to the proper place once the fix has been checked in. I'm proposing something like add two files to Lib/test: outstanding_bugs.py and outstanding_crashes.py. Both would be normal test files with info about the bug report and the code that causes problems. This test in test_compiler should be moved to outstanding_bugs.py. And for a different discussion: On 1/7/06, Jim Jewett <jimjjewett(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Maybe. Guido's statement (maybe short of a pronouncement) > was that keyword-only arguments were OK in principle, and > that *args could follow keywords. It wasn't true yet because > no one had put in the work, but it would be an acceptable > change. > > I interpret this to mean that > > def f(a=1, b): pass > > should not necessarily raise an error, but I would like to see what > it does to > > def f(a=1, b): > print a,b > f(b=7) > > before saying that it is OK.

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Installing PEPs
by Martin v. Löwis 14 Jan '06

14 Jan '06

I finally arranged for an automatic installation of PEPs: they will now get published in the subversion post-commit. Regards, Martin

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Re: [Python-Dev] Py_ssize_t output parameters (Was: [Python-checkins] r41971 ...)
by "Martin v. Löwis" 13 Jan '06

13 Jan '06

M.-A. Lemburg wrote: >>I don't believe the change is major. It only affects a few extensions, >>and for these, it is only a minor change. A single line of changing >>will be enough. > > > This is true for all the changes related to parameters passed by > value. It is not true for output parameters. For these, the > change will propagate into the extension and make quite a few > changes necessary (for the same reason you have to change > so many variables to Py_ssize_t). For the output parameter, just the variable receiving the value needs to be changed, and you are done. > We should make it possible to have a simple recompile of old > extensions continue to work with Python 2.5 (albeit without > them supporting 64-bit indexes) and without introducing > segfaults or buffer overflows that way. I cannot see how this could reasonably achieved for arbitrary extension modules. Regards, Martin

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