[Python-ideas] Possible new itertool: comm()

[Paul Moore]

On 6 January 2015 at 17:39, Andrew Barnert <abarnert at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> 2. The times I've needed this have been ad-hoc scripts (I'm on
>> Windows, so while a Unix user might use a quick shell pipeline with
>> comm, that's less convenient for me) where depending on a 3rd party
>> distribution from PyPI is less ideal.
>
> Why? Current standard Windows installers include pip, and being pure Python you won't need a compiler, so what's wrong with requiring a PyPI distribution? (Of course that means you need to be able to count on a relatively recent Python 3.4+/2.7+, but it's hard to see how that's worse than something in a future version of the stdlib, which would mean you need to be able to count on 3.5+.)

Well, I usually write my "little utility scripts" as simple .py files
to be run with the system Python. I tend to use them on multiple
machines. So unless a dependency is one of the modules I routinely
install (things like requests) the process goes run script, oops,
needed that distribution, pip install dist, run it again. Not a big
issue certainly (and hardly a showstopper) but annoying. And it does
mean I'd need to make a PyPI project for my personal utility
functions, which doesn't really seem an appropriate use for PyPI, tbh.

Requiring Python 3.5+ isn't a big deal, I routinely put the newest
version of Python on all my machines. The ones I can't tend to be
"secure", meaning I have no access to PyPI either :-(

> And I'll bet if you submit this as a pull request to more-itertools, it'll be accepted, meaning you don't even have to create or maintain a PyPI project.

Thanks for the suggestion, I might do that.

Paul