python-dev Summary for 2004-03-01 through 2004-03-15

[Brett C.]

python-dev Summary for 2004-03-01 through 2004-03-15
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This is a summary of traffic on the `python-dev mailing list`_ from 
March 01, 2004 through March 15, 2004.  It is intended to inform the 
wider Python community of on-going developments on the list.  To comment 
on anything mentioned here, just post to `comp.lang.python`_ (or email 
python-list@python.org which is a gateway to the newsgroup) with a 
subject line mentioning what you are discussing. All python-dev members 
are interested in seeing ideas discussed by the community, so don't 
hesitate to take a stance on something.  And if all of this really 
interests you then get involved and join `python-dev`_!

This is the thirty-seventh summary written by Brett Cannon (waiting for 
PyCon to start).

To contact me, please send email to brett at python.org ; I do not have 
the time to keep up on comp.lang.python and thus do not always catch 
follow-ups posted there.

All summaries are archived at http://www.python.org/dev/summary/ .

Please note that this summary is written using reStructuredText_ which 
can be found at http://docutils.sf.net/rst.html .  Any unfamiliar 
punctuation is probably markup for reST_ (otherwise it is probably 
regular expression syntax or a typo =); you can safely ignore it, 
although I suggest learning reST; it's simple and is accepted for `PEP 
markup`_ and gives some perks for the HTML output.  Also, because of the 
wonders of programs that like to reformat text, I cannot guarantee you 
will be able to run the text version of this summary through Docutils_ 
as-is unless it is from the `original text file`_.

.. _PEP Markup: http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0012.html

The in-development version of the documentation for Python can be found 
at http://www.python.org/dev/doc/devel/ and should be used when looking 
up any documentation on something mentioned here.  PEPs (Python 
Enhancement Proposals) are located at http://www.python.org/peps/ .  To 
view files in the Python CVS online, go to 
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/python/ .  Reported bugs 
and suggested patches can be found at the SourceForge_ project page.

The `Python Software Foundation`_ is the non-profit organization that 
holds the intellectual property for Python.  It also tries to forward 
the development and use of Python.  But the PSF_ cannot do this without 
donations.  You can make a donation at 
http://python.org/psf/donations.html .  Every penny helps so even a 
small donation (you can donate through PayPal or by check) helps.

.. _python-dev: http://www.python.org/dev/
.. _SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=5470
.. _python-dev mailing list: 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
.. _comp.lang.python: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=comp.lang.python
.. _Docutils: http://docutils.sf.net/
.. _reST:
.. _reStructuredText: http://docutils.sf.net/rst.html
.. _PSF:
.. _Python Software Foundation: http://python.org/psf/

.. contents::

.. _last summary: 
http://www.python.org/dev/summary/2004-02-01_2004-02-29.html
.. _original text file: 
http://www.python.org/dev/summary/2004-03-01_2004-03-15.ht


=====================
Summary Announcements
=====================
Still looking for a summer job or internship programming.  If you know 
of one, please let me know.

Ever since I first had to type Martin v. Loewis' name, I have had issues 
with Unicode in the summary.  When I realized there was a problem I 
thought it was Vim changing my Unicode in some way since I would notice 
problems when I reopened the file in TextEdit, OS X's included text 
editor that I have always used for writing the summaries (and no, I am 
not about to use Vim to do this nor Emacs; spoiled by real-time spelling 
and it is just the way I do it).  Well, I was wrong.  Should have known 
Vim was not the issue.

Turned out that TextEdit was opening the text files later assuming the 
wrong character encoding.  When I forced it to open all files as UTF-8 I 
no longer had problems.  This also explains the weird MIME-quoted issues 
I had earlier that Aahz pointed out to me since I was just copying from 
TextEdit into Thunderbird_, my email client, without realizing TextEdit 
was not reading the text properly.  So I thought I finally solved my 
problem.  Ha!  Not quite.

Turned out to be a slight issue on the generation of the email based on 
the tool chain for how we maintain the python.org web site.  This is in 
no way the web team's fault since I have unique requirements for the 
Summaries.  But without having to do some recoding of ht2html_ in order 
to specify the text encoding, I wasn't sure how I should handle this.

I thought I had this solved under reST_, but my solution turned out not 
to work.  So the battle continues.  So, for the moment, Unicode is not 
working for the summaries.

And here is a question of people who read the Summaries on a regular 
basis: would you get any benefit in having new summaries announced in 
the `python.org RSS feed`_?  Since this entails one extra, small step in 
each summary I am asking people to email me to let me know if this would 
in any way make their lives easier.  So please let me know if knowing 
when a new summary is out by way of the RSS feed would be beneficial to 
you or if just finding from `comp.lang.python`_ or 
`comp.lang.python.announce`_ is enough.

I actually wrote this entire summary either in the airport or on the 
flight to DC for PyCon (thank goodness for emergency aisles; my 6'6" 
frame would be in much more pain than it is otherwise) and thus on 
Spring Break!  I am hoping to use this as a turning point in doing the 
Summaries on a semi-monthly basis again.  We will see if Spring quarter 
lets me stick to that (expecting a lighter load with less stress next 
quarter).

.. _Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/
.. _ht2html: http://ht2html.sf.net/
.. _directive: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/spec/rst/directives.html
.. _python.org RSS feed: http://www.python.org/channews.rdf
.. _PyCon: http://www.pycon.org/
.. _comp.lang.python.announce: 
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=comp.lang.python.announce&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search

=========
Summaries
=========
--------
PEP news
--------
PEP 309 ("Partial Function Application") has been rewritten.

PEP 318 got a ton of discussion, to the point of warranting its own 
summary: `PEP 318 and the discussion that will never end`_.
PE 327, which is the spec for the Decimal module in the CVS sandbox, got 
an update.

Contributing threads:
   - `PEP 309 re-written 
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-March/042865.html>`__
   - `Changes to PEP 327: Decimal data type 
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-March/043155.html>`__


-----------------------------------------------
Playing willy-nilly with stack frames for speed
-----------------------------------------------
A patch to clean up the allocation and remove the freelist (stack frames 
not in use that could be used for something else) was proposed.  Of 
course it would have been applied immediately if there wasn't a catch: 
recursive functions slowed down by around 20%.

A way to get around this was proposed, but it would clutter up the code 
which was being simplified in the first place.  Guido said he would 
rather have that than have recursive calls take a hit.

Then a flurry of posts came about discussing other ways to try to speed 
up stack allocation.

Contributing threads:
   - `scary frame speed hacks 
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-March/042871.html>`__
   - `reusing frames 
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-March/042914.html>`__

----------------------------------------------
PEP 318 and the discussion that will never end
----------------------------------------------
Just looking at the number of contributing threads to this summary 
should give you an indication of how talked about this PEP became.  In 
case you don't remember the discussion `last time`_, this PEP covers 
function/method(/class?) decorators: having this::

   def foo() [decorate, me]: pass

be equivalent to::

   def foo(): pass
   foo = me(decorate(foo))

What most of the discussion came down to was syntax and the order of 
application.  As of this moment it has come down to either the syntax 
used above or putting the brackets between the function/method name and 
the parameters.  Guido spoke up and said he liked the latter syntax 
(which is used by Quixote_).  People, though, pointed out that while the 
syntax works for a single argument, adding a long list starts to 
separate the parameter tuple farther and farther from the 
function/method name.  There was at least one other syntax proposal but 
it was shot down quickly.

Order of application seems to have been settled.  Some want the order to 
be like in the example.  Others, though, want the reverse order: 
``decorate(me(foo))``.  In the end, though, the order in the example 
code is what people preferred.

In the end it was agreed the PEP needed to be thoroughly rewritten which 
is currently happening.

.. _last time: 
2004-02-01_2004-02-29.html#function-decoration-and-all-that-jazz
.. _Quixote: http://www.mems-exchange.org/software/quixote/

Contributing threads:
   - `Pep 318 - new syntax for wrappers 
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-March/042902.html>`__
   - `new syntax (esp for wrappers) 
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-March/042906.html>`__
   - `PEP 318 - function/method/class decoration 
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-March/042917.html>`__
   - `(Specific syntax of) PEP 318 - function/method/class 
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-March/042947.html>`__
   - `PEP 318 - generality of list; restrictions on elements 
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-March/042951.html>`__
   - `PEP 318 needs a rewrite 
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-March/042975.html>`__
   - `Python-Dev Digest, Vol 8, Issue 20 
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-March/043033.html>`__
   - `PEP 318 trial balloon (wrappers) 
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-March/043076.html>`__
   - `funcdef grammar production 
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-March/043142.html>`__


----------------------------------------
Compiler optimization flags for the core
----------------------------------------
The topic of compiler flags that are optimal for Python came up when 
Raymond Hettinger announced his new LIST_APPEND opcode (discussed later 
in `Optimizing: Raymond Hettinger's personal crack`_).  This stemmed 
from the fact that the bytecode has not been touched in a while.  This 
generated a short discussion on the magic that is caches and how the 
eval loop always throws a fit when it gets played with.  One suggestion 
was to rework some opcodes to use other opcodes instead in order to 
remove the original opcodes entirely from the eval loop.  But it was 
pointed out it would be better to just factor out the C code to 
functions so that they are just brought into the cache less often 
instead of incurring the overhead of more loops through the eval loop.

This then led to AM Kuchling to state that he was planning in giving a 
lightning talk at PyCon_ about various compiler optimization flags he 
tried out on Python.  Looks like that compiling Python/ceval.c with -Os 
(optimizes for space) w/ everything else using -O3 gave the best results 
using gcc 3.  This sparked the idea of more architecture-dependent 
compiler optimizations which would be set when 'configure' was run and 
detected the hardware of the system.

In the end no code was changed in terms of the compiler optimizations.

Contributing threads:
   - `New opcode to simplifiy/speedup list comprehensions 
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-March/042924.html>`__
   - `Who cares about the performance of these opcodes? 
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-March/042990.html>`__


------------------------------------------------------
Take using Python as a calculator to a whole new level
------------------------------------------------------
I remember once there was a thread on `comp.lang.python`_ about how to 
tell when you had an addiction to Python.  One of the points was when 
you start to use Python as your calculator (something I admit to openly; 
using the 'sum' built-in is wonderful for quick addition when I would 
have used a Scheme interpreter).  Well, Raymond Hettinger had the idea 
of adding a 'calculator' module that would provide a ""pretty good" 
implementations of things found on low to mid-range calculators like my 
personal favorite, the hp32sII student scientific calculator".  He then 
listed a bunch of functionality the HP calculator has that he would like 
to see as a module.

Beyond sparking some waxing about calculators, and the HP 32sII 
especially (I used a TI-82 back in high school and junior college so I 
won't even both summarizing the nostalgic daydreaming on HP 
calculators), the discussion focused mainly on what functionality to 
provide and the accuracy of the calculations.  The former topic focused 
on what would be reasonable and relatively easy to implement without 
requiring a mathematician to write in order to be correct or fast.

The topic of accuracy, though, was not as clear-cut.  First the issue of 
whether to use the in-development Decimal module would be the smart 
thing to do.  The consensus was to use Decimal since floating-point, 
even with IEEE 754 in place, is not accurate enough for something that 
wants to be as accurate as an actual calculator.  Then discussions on 
the precision of accuracy came up.  It seemed like it would be important 
to have a level of precision kept above the expected output precision to 
make sure any rounding errors and such would be kept to a minimum.

Raymond is going to write a PEP outlining the module.

Contributing threads:
   - `calculator module 
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-March/043003.html>`__


------------------------
dateutil module proposed
------------------------
Gustavo Niemeyer offered to integrate his dateutil_ module into the 
stdlib.  Discussion of how it should tie into datetime and whether all 
of it or only some of its functionality should be brought in was 
transpired.  As of right now the discussion is still going on.

.. _dateutil: https://moin.conectiva.com.br/DateUtil

Contributing threads:
   - `dateutil 
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-March/043054.html>`__


----------------------------------------------
Optimizing: Raymond Hettinger's personal crack
----------------------------------------------
Raymond Hettinger, the speed nut that he is, added a new opcode to 
Python to speed up list comprehensions by around 35%.  But his addiction 
didn't stop there.

Being the dealer of his own drug of choice, Raymond got his next fix by 
improving on iterations for dictionaries (this is, of course, after all 
of his work on the list internals).  As always, thanks goes to Raymond 
for putting in the work to make sure the CPython interpreter beats the 
Parrot_ interpreter by that much more come `OSCON 2004`_ and the 
Pie-thon contest.

And, at Hye-Shik Chang's request, Raymond listed off his list of things 
to do to feed his addiction so he doesn't go into withdrawls any time in 
the future.  Most of them are nice and involved that would make great 
personal/research projects.

.. _Parrot: http://www.parrotcode.org/
.. _OSCON 2004: http://conferences.oreillynet.com/os2004/

Contributing threads:
   - `New opcode to simplifiy/speedup list comprehensions 
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-March/042924.html>`__
   - `Joys of Optimization 
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-March/043097.html>`__