[FAQTS] Python Knowledge Base Update -- August 31st, 2000

[Fiona Czuczman]

Hello All,

Here are the latest entries into http://python.faqts.com

Now that the knowledge base has grown to a substantial number, 773 
entries currently, my contract with FAQTS has ended.  I will still hang 
around, I can't be got rid of that easily :-), and add content and 
maintain the resource (perhaps a little less frequently, sorry :(, if 
others want to help me out in my quest that  would be great.

best regards,

Fiona Czuczman


## Unanswered Questions ########################################


-------------------------------------------------------------
How to "expire" a web page with Python ?
http://www.faqts.com/knowledge-base/view.phtml/aid/5664
-------------------------------------------------------------
Quynh Nguyen Anh



## New Entries #################################################


-------------------------------------------------------------
Is there any online reference document which summarizes/discusses all Tkinter events?
http://www.faqts.com/knowledge-base/view.phtml/aid/5646
-------------------------------------------------------------
Fiona Czuczman
Fredrik Lundh

http://www.pythonware.com/library/tkinter/introduction/events-and-bindin
gs.htm briefly describes all important events.

There are more events, but they're either rather obscure, or they don't 
work the same way on all platforms.


-------------------------------------------------------------
How can I convert a gif image to a bitmap representation of it?
http://www.faqts.com/knowledge-base/view.phtml/aid/5665
-------------------------------------------------------------
Fiona Czuczman
Greg Landrum

I'm not completely sure what you mean by "bitmap representation", but
PIL probably does what you want.  :-)

To convert to a BMP (windows bitmap), you would do:
>>> from Pil import Image
>>> img = Image.open('foo.gif')
>>> img.save('foo.bmp')

If you would rather get a Numeric array with the values from the image:
>>> from Pil import Image
>>> from Numeric import *
>>> img = Image.open('foo.gif')
>>> arr = resize(fromstring(img.tostring(),Int8),img.size)

I hope this helps.

You can find PIL at URL:

http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/index.htm


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Is it possible to get the declaration of the argument-list of any function in the python engine? just like it is possible to get the func_name or doc-string.
http://www.faqts.com/knowledge-base/view.phtml/aid/5666
-------------------------------------------------------------
Fiona Czuczman
Alex Martelli

Yes; a very good packaging of this you can find in Lemburg's module 
'hack', see http://starship.python.net/crew/lemburg/hack.py.

Don't get put off by the module's name -- it's just a collection of
"tools that I find useful to examine code from inside an interactive
interpreter session", as the author says!

The functionality you want is packaged as part of function
func_sig of this module.

It is, of course, instructive to examine exactly what this function
does.  First of all:

def func_sig(func):
    if hasattr(func,'im_func'):
        func = func.im_func

This takes care of the case where 'func' is not really a function, but
rether a method; in this case, the real function is its attribute 
im_func, so this part "normalizes" this case back to the general case.  
Then:

    code = func.func_code
    fname = code.co_name
    callargs = code.co_argcount
    args = code.co_varnames[:callargs]

Now we have the function name (fname), and the arguments' names (args).

With just this part, we can already, in a sense, satisfy your request:

def func_args(func):
    if hasattr(func,'im_func'):
        func = func.im_func
    code = func.func_code
    fname = code.co_name
    callargs = code.co_argcount
    args = code.co_varnames[:callargs]
    return "%s(%s)" % (fname, string.join(args,','))

and now for example:

>>> fa.func_args(string.join)
'join(words,sep)'
>>>

What we're still missing are the default values of arguments that do
have them -- here, for example, the fact that the 'sep' argument can
be omitted, because it defaults to space.  And also, the ability of
some functions to accept unlimited lists of arguments (the *args form,
and/or **kw for keyword-arguments).  Lemburg goes into slightly deeper
waters to add this information, too...:

    args = list(code.co_varnames[:callargs])

...list, not tuple, because we may want to change some elements...

    if func.func_defaults:
        i = len(args) - len(func.func_defaults)
        for default in func.func_defaults:
            try:
                r = repr(default)
            except:
                r = '<repr-error>'
            if len(r) > 100:
                r = r[:100] + '...'

...repr is used to get the string with which to represent the
    default value, with due care for possible errors, and/or
    too-long representations, which get truncated to 100 chars
    (with an ellipsis ... to remind the reader they're truncated)

            arg = args[i]
            if arg[0] == '.':
                # anonymous arguments
                arg = '(...)'
            args[i] = '%s=%s' % (arg,r)
            i = i + 1

I don't know what "anonymous arguments" are -- I'm learning of their 
very existence by studying this code (talk about instructive!-)

    if code.co_flags & 0x0004: # CO_VARARGS
        args.append('*'+code.co_varnames[callargs])
        callargs = callargs + 1
    if code.co_flags & 0x0008: # CO_VARKEYWORDS
        args.append('**'+code.co_varnames[callargs])
        callargs = callargs + 1

As Lemburg notes in his comments, these constants are taken right from 
the Python compiler's include file.

    return '%s(%s)' % (fname,string.join(args,', '))

At last -- the nicely formatted result!

>>> func_sig(string.join)
"join(words, sep=' ')"
>>>


Just one caveat: this will not work for functions written in C! The 
"signature" is not available in this case by "introspection" in this 
way; to see the difference:

>>> import string
>>> import strop
>>> dir(string.join)
['__doc__', '__name__', 'func_code', 'func_defaults', 'func_doc',
'func_globals', 'func_name']
>>> dir(strop.join)
['__doc__', '__name__', '__self__']
>>>

i.e., the Python-written 'string.join' wrapper offers the various
func_code, etc, members upon which this introspection can be based; the 
bare-C 'strop.join' underlying level doesn't, so, no real introspection 
-- you have to rely on the __doc__:

>>> print strop.join.__doc__
join(list [,sep]) -> string
joinfields(list [,sep]) -> string

Return a string composed of the words in list, with intervening 
occurences of sep.  Sep defaults to a single space.

(join and joinfields are synonymous)
>>>

Not too bad, after all:-).


## Edited Entries ##############################################


-------------------------------------------------------------
Is there a Python MySQL module for use under Windows?
http://www.faqts.com/knowledge-base/view.phtml/aid/4188
-------------------------------------------------------------
Fiona Czuczman, Gerhard Haering
Stefan Franke,Steve Cook

You will find a version of MySQLdb (version 0.2.1) compiled for Win32
at http://home.t-online.de/home/err666/MySQL/MySQLdb-0.2.1-windows.zip
It works fine for me connecting to MySQL 2.23/Win2k and
MySQL 2.22/Linux.