Mailman 3 November 2007 - Python-Dev

Summary of Tracker Issues
by Tracker Nov. 16, 2007

Nov. 16, 2007

ACTIVITY SUMMARY (11/09/07 - 11/16/07) Tracker at http://bugs.python.org/ To view or respond to any of the issues listed below, click on the issue number. Do NOT respond to this message. 1323 open (+13) / 11612 closed (+25) / 12935 total (+38) Open issues with patches: 418 Average duration of open issues: 691 days. Median duration of open issues: 799 days. Open Issues Breakdown open 1318 (+13) pending 5 ( +0) Issues Created Or Reopened (39) _______________________________ … [View More]

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New python developer
by Amaury Forgeot d'Arc Nov. 16, 2007

Nov. 16, 2007

Hello, As you may have seen, I have recently been granted developer privileges on python svn. Let me introduce myself. I am French, 35 years old, and father of 5 children. I work as a programmer in a fund manager company, and have been working with python for eight years now. What I mostly like in python are: - fun to work with - its robustness: not only against bugs, but the stability of its concepts, and the readability of its code base; - easy to interface with any other system. To start … [View More]

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Last chance for PyCon talk & tutorial proposals!
by David Goodger Nov. 16, 2007

Nov. 16, 2007

Thanks to all the proposal authors so far, we have received lots of proposals for PyCon talks & tutorials. But we'd like to have even more. Alas, the proposal submission deadline should have been set after a weekend, not before. So we have decided to extend the proposal submission deadline to Monday, November 19 at midnight (Chicago time). This gives you a *whole extra weekend* to write up your talk and tutorial ideas! If you've been procrastinating, stop! Get started on a proposal … [View More]

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Hello, I'm the other new guy
by Christian Heimes Nov. 15, 2007

Nov. 15, 2007

Hello Pythonistas and fellow core developers! After Amaury introduced himself I've decided that I *have* to take some time to introduce myself, too. Hello, my name is Christian Heimes and I'm a 28 years old German from Aachen. Aachen is a beautiful city about 70km West to Cologne and near the borders to The Netherlands and Belgium. Some of you may know me from #python as Crys (|Crys| or Crys_) or my former nick Tiran. Others may have seen me at some Python related conferences like EuroPython … [View More]2003 in Charleroi/Belgium, 2004+2005 in Gothenburg/Sweden, DZUG 2004 at the DESY/Hamburg or Plone Conference 2004/Vienna. Before I'm going to bore you with the (Python) story of my life let me tell you something about my persona. I'm of average build and average height but people usually don't describe me as an average guy. Unless you see the more Metal and Gothic like chap with glasses, chin-beard and very long hair in black cloths, boots and a hat as ordinary. *g* When I'm not sitting in front of my box I'm spending time with my beautiful girl friend, listening to music, my friends or in a disco. I enjoy cooking but I rarely spend time in front of the TV. I only watch some well selected series like Myth Busters + LOST and information channels like ARTE. My more exotic hobby is Medieval Living History, also known as Reenactment although we don't take it as serious as Reenacters. I usually describe it as a counter weight to my science and computer interests. We are tailoring cloths and living in tents or castles like people about 1200 to 600 years ago. That is without electricity, mobile phones and computers as much as it is possible these days. It's like a vacation from the modern world for a view days or entire week for me. Now here is the story how Python entered my life: I had my first real contact with Python in 2002 when some friends and me were evaluation web frameworks for the relaunch of our community site. We were all frustrated from our past experiences with PHP and MySQL and were looking for something innovative and more professional. Quickly we were brim over with enthusiasm for Zope3 and Python. But Zope3 wasn't ready in 2002 and the community project went dead after some internal frictions and lack of time. But I kept learning Python and playing around with Zope3 and Zope2. After some Zope related jobs I came in contact with Plone and eventually became a Plone core developer and elected board member of the newly formed Plone Foundation. Unfortunately personal and health problems forced me to drop everything. After things went better again I focused on other areas like PyQt4, Twisted. C#/.NET and PythonDotNET in order to broaden my knowledge and learn other techniques beside CMS and web applications. I came to Python C development as I worked on PythonDotNET for one of my projects. Although it might sound strange how a .NET and C# project got me into C and Python C API but it's easy to explain. In order to fix PythonDotNET for Python 2.5, Mono and UCS-4 builds of Python I had to familiarize myself with the C API of Python. The project is a bridge between CPython and .NET and not related to IronPython. The C# is doing a lot of calls into the C library using a technology that can be compared to ctypes. The code jumps forth and back between C, C#/.NET and Python code. It's a nightmare to debug problems but it's fun, too. Once I had overcome my fear of Python's C API I saw its elegance and started to contribute to Python's core. I wrote some patches for Python 3000 because I saw an opportunity to get involved and contribute. And because I like to play with new stuff ;) After a heap of patches and bug reports Guido finally granted me developer privileges. I'm planing to focus my work on Python 3000. I'm a Linux user (10 years server and 5 years work station experience) but I've a VMWare running to test patches on Windows XP, too. Questions? :) Christian [View Less]

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Re: [Python-Dev] Hello, I'm the other new guy
by Terry Jones Nov. 15, 2007

Nov. 15, 2007

>>>>> "Guido" == Guido van Rossum <guido(a)python.org> writes: Guido> I feel left out. I have only one child and I don't qualify as Guido> 'strange' by any stretch of the imagination... Sometimes I think I'm Guido> the only regular guy working on Python. ;-) Ah well, that explains a lot! :-) Anyone else here think they're normal? 1. You're a programmer 2. You work on Python 3. You're on the dev mailing list (and you read it) Each one of those must be … [View More]

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Summary of Tracker Issues
by Tracker Nov. 15, 2007

Nov. 15, 2007

ACTIVITY SUMMARY (11/08/07 - 11/15/07) Tracker at http://bugs.python.org/ To view or respond to any of the issues listed below, click on the issue number. Do NOT respond to this message. 1330 open (+19) / 11604 closed (+26) / 12934 total (+45) Open issues with patches: 425 Average duration of open issues: 687 days. Median duration of open issues: 798 days. Open Issues Breakdown open 1325 (+19) pending 5 ( +0) Issues Created Or Reopened (47) _______________________________ … [View More]

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Alternative C implementation idea for collections.deque
by Daniel Stutzbach Nov. 15, 2007

Nov. 15, 2007

Many years ago I implemented a deque type in C (for use in C programs) using a single dynamically sized array as the underling type, along with an extra integer to designate where the "start" of the list is. Somehow, I had always imagined that Python's implementation worked the same way, but was just looking at the code and found that it uses doubly-linked lists of 62-item blocks. I just wanted to toss my approach out there to see if it might offer better performance and/or simpler code (my … [View More]pure-C implementation is only 80 lines of code). If there's interest, I'd be happy to work it up into a patch. I could also do some performance tests if others have specific use cases they'd like to see tested. I see the advantages as follows: - __getitem__ would take O(1) time instead of O(n) - Dirt simple implementation Compared to the existing code, memory allocation/deallocation is less frequent but more expensive when necessary, working out to O(1) amortized time (same as the current implementation). The basic idea is to use a single dynamically sized array (much like Python's list type). An extra integer points to the start of the deque within the array, and the data implicitly wraps around the end of the list back to the beginning. Here's the basic data structure: struct deque { PyObject **obs; int max_len; /* Number of objects we can store in the deque before having to reallocate */ int len; /* Number of objects currently in the deque */ int start; /* Where in obs the objects starts */ } When len == max_len and the user adds an element, we reallocate obs. Much like Python's list type, this can be done in such a way that memory allocation takes O(1) amortized time (e.g., by doubling max_len).. The start of the list is always obs[start] and the last element of the list is at obs[(start + len - 1) % max_len]. The nth element of the list is obs[(start + n) % max_len]. I think an example would be helpful. For illustrative purposes, suppose we start with max_len=4. Each line is followed by a picture of the data structure's contents: >>> x = deque() {obs = {NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL}, max_len = 4, len = 0, start = 0} >>> x.extend((1,2,3,4)) {obs = {1, 2, 3, 4}, max_len = 4, len = 4, start = 0} >>> x.popleft() {obs = {NULL, 2, 3, 4}, max_len = 4, len = 3, start = 1} >>> x.append(5) {obs = {5, 2, 3, 4}, max_len = 4, len = 4, start = 1} >>> x.popleft() {obs = {5, NULL, 3, 4}, max_len = 4, len = 3, start = 2} >>> x.pop() {obs = {NULL, NULL, 3, 4}, max_len = 4, len = 2, start = 2} Comments? Thoughts? Would a patch be welcome? -- Daniel Stutzbach, Ph.D. President, Stutzbach Enterprises LLC [View Less]

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Re: [Python-Dev] Suggestions for Improvements to namedtuple
by Raymond Hettinger Nov. 15, 2007

Nov. 15, 2007

> In my opinion __replace__ should be able to replace multiple fields. This suggestion is accepted and checked-in. See revision 58975. Surprisingly, the required signature change results in improved clarity. This was an all around win. Raymond

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smlop - maintaned ? - what is the status of this module ?
by Grzegorz Makarewicz Nov. 14, 2007

Nov. 14, 2007

Hi I have some scripts where this module is used - asyncore, xmlrpc, sgmlop. Some errors are arriving - memory errors reported by msvc2005 malloc/free. Where I should report bugs ? my env: py-2.5- partial cvs, sgmlop either from Frideric-s site or pyxml - same effect. tia, mak

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Re: [Python-Dev] Suggestions for Improvements to namedtuple
by Raymond Hettinger Nov. 14, 2007

Nov. 14, 2007

> crucial stuff like __fields__ ... fully > read-write. On further thought, I think this is a good idea. Nothing good can come from writing to this class variable. Suggestion is checked-in in rev 58971. Curiously, it was already documented as read-only (I took the time machine out for a spin). Raymond

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